Literary Terms

Modernism:

The term modernism is widely used to identify new and distinctive features in the subjects, forms, concepts and styles of literature and the other arts in the early decades of the twentieth century but especially after World War I (1914­18)

The specific features signified by modernism (or by the adjective modernist) vary with the user, but many critics agree that itinvolvs a deliberate and radical break with some of the traditional bases not only of western art, but of western culture in general. Important intellectual precursors of modernism, in this sense, are thinkers who had questioned that had supported traditional modes of social organization, religion, and morality, and also traditional ways of concevning the human self thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsce (1844-1900), Karl marx, sigmund Freud and James G. Frazer whose twelve volume The Golden Bough (1890-1915) stressed the correspondence between central Chritian tenets and pagan often barbaric, myths and rituals.

                                  Major works of modernist fiction following Joyce’s Ulysses and his even more radical Finnrgans Walk (1939), subvert the basic convention of earlier rose fiction by breaking up the narrative continuity departing from the standard ways of representing characters and violating the traditional syntax and coherence of narrative language by the use of stream of consciousness and order innovative modes of narration.

Post modernism

                           The term Post modernism is often applied to the literature and art after World War II (1939-45), when the effects on Western moral of the first World War were greatly exacerbated by the experience of Nazi totalitarianism and mass extermination, the threat of total destruction by the atomic bomb, the progressive devastation of the natural enviornment, and the ominous fact of overpopulation.

                           Post modernism involves not only a continuation, sometimes carried to an extream of the countertradition experiments of modernism but also diverse attempts to break away from modernist forms whic had, inevitably become in their turn conventional as well as to overthrow the elitism of modernist “high art” by recourse for models to the “mass culture” in film television newspaper cartoons and popular music.

                         Post modernism in literature and the arts has parallels with the movement known as postsructuralism in linguistic and literary theory posstructuralist undertake to subvert the foundations of language in order to demonstrate that its seeming meaningfulness dissipates for a rigorous inquirer into a play of conflicting indeterminacies or else undertake to show that all forms of cultural discourse are manifestations of the reigning ideology or of the relations and constructions of power in contemporary society.

                       Many of the work postmodern literature—by Jorge Luis Borges, Samuel Beckett, Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Pynchon, Roland Barthes, and many others—so blend literary genres, cultural and stylistic levels, the serious and the playful, that they resist classification according to traditional literary rubrics.

                              An undertaking in some postmodernist writings—prominently in Samuel Beckett and other authors of the literature of the absurd—is to subvert the foundations of our accepted modes of thought and experience so as to reveal the meaninglessness of existence and the underlying "abyss," or "void," or "nothingness" on which any supposed security is conceived to be precariously suspended.

                          Literary anomalies are paralleled in other arts by phenomena like pop art, op art, the musical compositions of John Cage, and the films of Jean-Luc Godard and other directors.

Queer Theory

                        Queer Studies is an attempt to redefine sexual identities. It seeks a cultural/political space where the homosexual is no more the ‘perverted’, ‘sick’ other of heterosexuality.

                 In 1969 police raided the Stonewall Tavern in New York City. Many gays, lesbians, transvestites fought back. The subsequent battles and riots received wide publicity. The first meeting of the British Gay Liberation Front took place at the London School of Economics on 13 November 1970, and the first Annual Gay Pride march on 1 April 1972. Since then the  gay liberation movement has sought of fight social, legal, medical and religious oppression and tried to locate a whole new cultural space for the thus far marginalized community.

                 Gay and Lesbian theory assumes that sexuality and sexual preferences/orientations play a prominent role in the construction of social identity. Queer theory argues following Michel Foucault that the homosexual as a social category emerges essentially in the post Renaissance period.

                Queer theory emphasizes the luminal nature of identity. Queer theory interrogates the modes by which sexual boundaries of the inside and outside are constructed sexual identities assigned and sexual politics formulated.

                    Queer theory demonstrates how heterosexuality has been considered the norm and homosexuality as deviance. It argues that identity is secured only through performance and repetition.

Diaspora

Diaspora Literature involves an idea of a homeland, a place from where the displacement occurs and narratives of harsh journeys undertaken on account of economic compulsions. Basically Diaspora is a minority community living in exile. The Oxford English Dictionary 1989 Edition (second) traces the etymology of the word 'Diaspora' back to its Greek root and to its appearance in the Old Testament (Deut: 28:25) as such it references. God's intentions for the people of Israel to be dispersed across the world.

Birth of Diaspora Literature

However, the 1993 Edition of Shorter Oxford's definition of Diaspora can be found. While still insisting on capitalization of the first letter, 'Diaspora' now also refers to 'anybody of people living outside their traditional homeland.’ William Sarfan points out that the term Diaspora can be applied to expatriate minority communities whose members share some of the common characteristics

Robin Cohen classifies Diaspora as:

1. Victim Diasporas
2. Labour Diasporas
3. Imperial Diasporas
4. Trade Diasporas
5. Homeland Diasporas
6. Cultural Diasporas

Indian Diaspora can be classified into two kinds:

1. Forced Migration to Africa, Fiji or the Carribbean on account of slavery or indentured labour in the 18th or 19th century.

2.Voluntary Migration to U.S.A., U.K., Germany, France or other European countries for the sake of professional or academic purposes.

According to Amitava Ghose-'the Indian Diaspora is one of the most important demographic dislocation of Modern Times'(Ghosh,) and each day is growing and assuming the form of representative of a significant force in global culture. If we take the Markand Paranjpe, we will find two distinct phases of Diaspora, these are called the visitor Diaspora and Settler Diaspora much similar to Maxwell's 'Invader' and 'Settler' Colonialist.

Bhabha writes:

"That it is from those who have suffered the sentence of history-subjugation, domination, Diaspora, displacement- that we learn our most enduring lessons for living and thinking."

Alamkara School

The earliest and most sustained school it studies literary language and assumes that the focus of literariness is in the figure of speech in the mode of expression in the grammatical accuracy and pleasantness of sound. This does not mean that meaning is ignored. In fact structural taxonomies of different figures of speech are models of how meaning is cognized and how it is to be extracted from the text.

       Bhamaha is the first alamkara poetician. In Kavyalamkara he described 35 figures of speech. Dandin, Udbhata, Rudrata and Vamana. In Anandavardhana alamkara was sought to be integrated with Dhavani and Rasa. There is a form of suggestion which is evokes by figure of speech and which thus contributed to aesthetic experience.

                       The categories of alamkara have been classified by different poetician into different kind. Rudrata divides it into two types those based on phonetic form its called sabdalamkara and those who based on meaning its called Arthalamkara. Bhoja also divided it into seven types.

1. Sadrasya

2. Virodha

3. Srnkhalabadha

4. Tarka Nyaya

5. Lokanyaya

6. Kavyanyaya and

7. Gudhartha pratiti.

     Mamata also divided alamkara into seven types. They are

1. Upama

2. Rupaka

3. Aprastuta Prasnsa

4. Dipaka

5. Vyatiraeka

6. Virodha  and

7. Samuccaya.