Literary Oracle

189 Pages·2022·2.408 MB·English

ISSN: 2348-4772
Literary
Oracle
Vol.6, Issue 1, May 2022
A Journal of the Department of English,
Berhampur University, Odisha, India
[Special Issue: Commemorating 100 years of The Waste Land]

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Dr. Shruti Das Ph.D
Head, P.G. Department of English,
Berhampur University, Odisha, India

ASSOCIATE EDITORS
Dr. Sharbani Banerjee Ph.D
Associate Professor, P.G. Department of English,
TDB College, Raniganj, West Bengal
Dr. Deepshikha Routray Ph.D
Assistant Professor, Maharishi College of Natural Law,
Bhubaneswar, Odisha
CHIEF ADVISORS:
 Professor Jatin K Nayak, Utkal University, India
 Professor Nicolas Tredell, University of Sussex, UK
 Professor Alan Johnson, University of Idaho, USA

EDITORIAL BOARD:
 Prof. Ram Narayan Panda, Berhampur University, India.
 Prof. Subhra Prakash Das, Ravenshaw University, India.
 Dr. C. Sharada, Associate Prof., The English and Foreign Languages University, India
 Dr Balabhadra Tripathy, Associate Professor, PG Dept. of English, Berhampur University, India
 Prof. Susheel K Sharma, Allahabad University, Prayagraj, India
 Dr Patrycja Austin, University of Rzeszow, Poland.
 Prof. Bijay K. Danta, Central University of Tejpur, Assam, India
 Prof. Hitesh D Raviya, The Maharaj Sayajirao University of Baroda, Gujarat, India
 Prof. Lynette Russell, Director, Monash Indigenous Centre, Australia.
 Prof. Sukhbir Singh, Nalanda University, Bihar, India
 Prof. Ludmila Volna, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic.
 Dr. Debashree Dattaray, Associate Prof., Jadavpur University, India.
 Dr Joji J. Paniker, CMS College, Kottayam, Kerala, India

REVIEW EDITORS:
 Prof. Jaydeep Sarangi, Principal, New Alipore College, Kolkata, India.
 Dr P.V. Laxmiprasad, Asst. Prof of English, Satvahana University, Telengana.

NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY BOARD:
 Prof. Peter Wolfe, Prof. Emeritus, University of Missourie, St. Louis, USA
 Prof. Daya Dissanayake, Writer, Columnist, Activist, Sri Lanka
 Dr. Ecaterina Petrascu, Spiru Haret University, Bucharest, Romania.
 Prof. Ellen Handler Spitz, Visual Art University of Maryland, USA.
 Dr. Lata Mishra, Associate Prof., Editor, Gwalior.
 Prof. Fewzia Bedjaoui, Sidi Bel Abbes University, Algeria.
 Prof. A. Karunakar, Director, OUCIP, India.
 Prof. Maggie A. Bowers, University of Portsmouth, UK.
 Prof. M E Vedasharan, EFLU, Hyderabad.

DISCLAIMER:
The contents of all the articles included in this volume do not necessarily reflect the views of the
editors. The authors of the articles are responsible for the opinions, criticisms and factual
information presented. The contributors are also responsible for ensuring the proper adherence to
the scientific rules of writing and copyright regulations. While the editors have tried their best to
carefully review, format and make necessary corrections in the manuscripts, if there are still any
lapses, the onus lies only with the authors of the articles..
Literary Oracle is an ERIH PLUS indexed peer reviewed Journal of
the Post Graduate Department of English, Berhampur University,
published from New Delhi by Authorspress, India. It publishes
original articles on Literature, Language, Culture and issues related
to Environment, indigenous people and related fields.
Interdisciplinary papers with relation to humanities and social
sciences are welcome.
LO is published twice a year, once in May and once in December
each year. The last date for submission for the May issue is 31st
March and the last date for submission for the December issue is
31st October, respectively.
Literary Oracle publishes Research articles, Book Reviews and
Interviews.
The Journal does not charge for publishing. The pdf version of the
journal will be available on the journal website.
Annual subscription charges of 1200 INR will entitle the subscriber
to two issues of the journal of that year.

E
DITORIAL
Death said, ‘your son I shall take’
The bandit said ‘I will your wealth’
Destiny said, ‘I will take all that you call your own’
And the critic said, ‘I will snatch away your name and fame ‘
But the poet gently smiled, ‘Which one of you can take away the
felicity of my words?’
Rabindranath Tagore (translation ours)
These lines were written by Rabindranath Tagore ,th ebard of India,
nearly a century ago yet their reverberations are felt even today. The
Covid 19 pandemich asd evastatedh umankinda ndin deedbr oughtin
its wa ke de ath,ba ndits an dde stiny th atTa gore w rote ab out.Q uite a
fe wof us hav e lost some ofour de aron es;hu man r elations ,finances,
education ,trade,tou rism an dsustain able d evelopment projects have
allunde rgone a kind ofchan g e like n ever bef ore. Even before a llthe
people cou ldb evacci nated a nd Covid19er adic ated;be for etheworld
couldg etba ckonh erfeet econ omica llya ndp sycho logically,thew orld
hasagainbeenth row ninto acri sis,thi stime manma de,in t heshap eof
Russ ia ’swar on U krai ne .Th is is starkly rem ini scent of anoth er
gruesom e pandemic an danothe r devastatin g warexac tly a hundred
years ago.S cabs have bee n removed and m emory istra nslated into
reality w here anxiety of e xistence a nd tr auma o f separ ation ha ve
become b edfe llows w ith aweird new nor mal.Yet ,thisistheju nctu re
where thew ordsmit h cr eates an d gr eat litera ture isb orn .C.S.Lewis
oncesa id,“Y ouca nmakean yth ingby writ ing”an dthi scoul dnoth ave
been t ruer than at thetime ofth isgl obal h um anitar ian c risis. Write rs
hav e ind ee d m ade lit erature ,addr essed the wo unds and af fected
healing by mixing “m emo ry andd esire ”;desper ation an dh ope and
subjugatio n an drebelli on.In1922,w asp ublish ed o neofthegre atest
modernis t p oems ofo ur times, The Wa ste Land.N icolas Tred ell has
rig htly argue d at theou tset o fhisess ay “The Was te Land :Traum a and
Healin g” ,inc luded inth isvolu me of Literary Orac le,that“T .S.Eliot’s
gr eatM odernis t
6  Literary Oracle – ISSN: 2348-4772 – Vol.6, Issue 1, May 2022
poem The Waste Land was first published 100 years ago, in 1922, at a
time when the world was trying to recover from a global trauma, or
rather two combined traumas of a kind with which we are all too
familiar today: war and pandemic”. Pradipta Sengupta, with the help
of gaze theory, interestingly highlights Eliot’s involvement with
visual culture and the avant-garde art movements of the twentieth
century in “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock”, a precursor of The
Waste Land. A. N. Dwibedi’s essay “Indian Philosophy in Structuring
The Waste Land” analyses the structure of the poem to expose the
elements of Hindu and Buddhist philosophy that have gone into
making the poem. Indrani Deb on her part argues about the currency
of The Waste Land today and contends that the success and
sustainability of the poem is because of its multicultural multi-
religious nature. Devanshi’s essay offers a new dimension in looking
at the poem. She claims that the predicament of humans portrayed in
the poem is a result of systematic technology induced
dehumanisation. Kasturi Joddar makes a comparative study of The
Waste Land and Arun Kolathkar’s Jejuri positing the contemporary
relevance and scope of The Waste Land. We hope that in future our
contributors and other scholars will contribute more to T.S. Eliot
scholarship.
Despite dark clouds of anxiety and uncertainty and a difficult
limping back to normalcy through a new hybrid work culture in the
cruel April heat, the Editors and publisher of Literary Oracle decided
to bring out a special issue commemorating the hundred years of the
publication of T.S. Eliot’s magnum opus, The Waste Land while paying
homage to his other poems too. We have worked hard and brought
together scholars from across the globe and encased their erudition
within the covers of our journal to ‘make’ a memorable special
edition by paying homage to the greatest modernist poet T.S. Eliot,
on occasion of the centenary of the publication of The Waste Land
(1922) and also including research papers in varied areas and
retaining our ‘Interdisciplinary’ and ‘International’ identity. We sent
out a ‘Call for Papers’ when the third wave of the pandemic was
raging around the world with the ‘Omicron’ fear shutting the doors
and confining people again. We are honoured and humbled by the
huge response of researchers as papers poured in from all the corners
of the world. Scholars from United Kingdom, France, United States,
Editorial  7
Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal and India reinforced our faith in our
mission to create sustainable literary and social criticism that will
help budding students, teachers and scholars alike. Aditi Jana’s essay
interrogates gender in the poems of Rupi Kaur and Tishani Joshi as
they promote the disregard of margins and peripheries in the quest
for self-identity. The double marginalisation of women in the Arab
countries as they are subjected to multiple forms of violence and
subjugation is the central core of discussion by Debabrata Das as he
discusses the works of Ahdaf Soueif and Fadia Fakir. Dipankar Parui
provokes the reader to delve deep into the fundamental questions
raised by Amitav Ghosh in his landmark non-fiction work The Great
Derangement regarding the lack of interest and concern over the
serious ecocritical apocalypse in the world of literature. Khum Prasad
Sharma presents an insightful analysis of Gita Kesari’s path-breaking
novel Kasingara which relates the tragic tale of a young girl, Maiya
Saheb who is victim of patriarchy. The lack of sensitivity in the
portrayal of disability in the Hindi film Zero is the topic of Manirul
Islam’s article and it also highlights the deprivation of disabled actors
who enact the drama on celluloid. Claude Omhovère’s thought-
provoking paper discusses how landscape writing enhances the
literary economy of the novel Fire in the Rain by Anita Desai. She
argues how two landscape painting traditions that were a
millennium apart- the Shanshui style of the Chinese and the
Renaissance tradition of the West – were used by Desai in an
interplay of pictorial traditions that upset static views of an eternal
India steeped in tradition. The art of translation, its uses and
difficulties have been delineated by Sukriti Ghoshal as he posits how
translation interrogates the power structure and embraces
internationalism. Suparna Roy’s paper examines the peripheries of
women as subjective objects in Nobody Can Love You More by Mayank
Austen Soofi. The subjugation, ensuing depression and the inherent
fortitude of African women that enables them to survive, is the
central point of discussion by Thomas Jay Lynn, where he analyses
the novel Half a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
The scholarly papers and book reviews included in this issue
address a vast gamut of multi-disciplinary deliberations that are
relevant, thought-provoking and will surely add substantially to the
8  Literary Oracle – ISSN: 2348-4772 – Vol.6, Issue 1, May 2022
knowledge bank in related fields of inquiry and will serve to broaden
the readers’ awareness.
Literary Oracle welcomes suggestions from her readers and
wishes them a happy reading experience.
Shruti Das,
Sharbani Banerjee
Deepshikha Routray
C
ONTENTS
EDITORIAL 5
RESEARCH PAPERS
I. SPECIAL SECTION ON THE WASTE LAND
1. The Waste Land: Trauma and Healing 11
Nicolas Tredell
2. The Play of Gaze in T.S. Eliot’s
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” 27
Pradipta Sengupta
3. Indian Philosophy in Structuring The Waste Land 41
A.N. Dwivedi
4. Towards The Wasteness of The Waste Land 54
Indrani Deb
5. T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ and Romanticised
Technology – A Study of Modern Discourse Network 64
Devanshi
6. The Thematic and the Structural Semblances: A Study of
T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and Arun Kolatkar’s Jejuri 74
Kasturi Joddar
II. GENERAL SECTION
1. Interrogating Gender and Empowering Women:
A Study of Selected Poems of Rupi Kaur and Tishani Doshi 85
Aditi Jana
2. The Triumphant Cleopatra: Locating the Voices of Resistance
in the Select Works of Ahdaf Soueif and Fadia Faqir 94
Debabrata Das