UGC Comparative Literature - II (June 2014)

Stephen Greenblatt is a central figure in New Historicism and wrote the influential essay "Towards a Poetics of Culture". He explores the relationship between literary texts and their historical contexts, emphasizing that literature is part of a larger social fabric. Although the question uses the word "Politics", it refers to this foundational theoretical statement.

The Wretched of the Earth was written by Frantz Fanon, not Ngugi Wa Thiongo. The other three works are well-known books by Ngugi.

Samaresh Basu wrote the novel 'Dekhi Nei Phire', which is a fictionalized biography of the sculptor Ram Kinkar Baij.

The Tainted Throne is a novel by S.P. Somtow that features Mughal paintings as a significant element in its narrative.

James Joyce famously incorporates references to Mozart's Don Giovanni in his works, most notably in Ulysses.

Down Second Avenue by Es'kia Mphahlele is a classic autobiography that serves as a coming-of-age narrative set in South Africa.

Lust for Life is a biographical novel by Irving Stone that depicts the life of the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh.

Ezra Pound was a key figure in the Vorticist movement, which he founded alongside Wyndham Lewis.

Eugene Nida's work in translation theory, particularly regarding dynamic equivalence, is rooted in sociolinguistic principles.

In thematology, the situation is often described as the bridge or connection between the abstract motif and the concrete action in a narrative.

Octavio Paz, the Mexican poet and essayist, wrote extensively on translation, famously describing it as a way to face the otherness of the universe.

Balyakala Sakhi is a novel about childhood romance and social life in Kerala, whereas the other three options are canonical texts centered on the Partition of India.

The Translator's Invisibility: A History of Translation is a seminal work by Lawrence Venuti.

Peter Newmark is well-known for his distinction between semantic and communicative translation in his theoretical writings.

A leitmotiv is a recurring theme or motif, and its effectiveness relies on the dynamics of reiteration or repetition throughout a work.

Goethe articulated this view on 'stoff' (subject matter) in his discussions on literature and the creative process.

J.C. Catford is widely recognized for his linguistic approach to translation, defining it as the replacement of textual material in one language by equivalent material in another. This definition appears in his seminal work, A Linguistic Theory of Translation.

Macbeth is frequently analyzed as a Machiavellian text due to its exploration of political ambition, the subversion of moral order, and the pragmatic, often ruthless, pursuit of power. The protagonist's trajectory mirrors the themes of political maneuvering and the corruption of the soul found in Machiavelli's The Prince.

Vladimir Propp is famous for his structuralist analysis of folktales in 'Morphology of the Folktale', where he identified recurring narrative functions. His work fundamentally changed the study of folklore by moving beyond historical-geographic methods.

Milman Parry, along with Albert Lord, conducted groundbreaking research on oral tradition, specifically focusing on the Homeric epics. Their work established the theory of oral-formulaic composition in epic poetry.

Cicero is often cited in classical rhetoric for his discussions on the distinct styles and categories of oratorical and literary expression. While Aristotle also categorized genres, Cicero's work is frequently highlighted for its emphasis on the segregation of these modes.

Zamyatin, Huxley, and Orwell are the foundational authors of the dystopian genre. Tolstoy's 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich' is a realist novella focused on existentialism and mortality, not a dystopian political narrative.

Reception theory, particularly as developed by the Constance School, emphasizes the role of the reader and the social context in which a text is received. This connects literary studies to sociology, as it examines how literature functions within a society.

Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar's 'Bhrantibilas' is a Bengali adaptation of Shakespeare's 'The Comedy of Errors'. It is a classic example of cross-cultural literary reception in 19th-century India.

Draupadi has become a central figure in modern Indian literature, particularly in feminist retellings that explore themes of power, justice, and agency. Works by authors like Mahasweta Devi have cemented her status as the most reinterpreted character.

The Tale of Genji, written by Murasaki Shikibu in 11th-century Japan, is widely considered the world's first novel. It predates the European novelistic tradition by several centuries.

Sisir Kumar Das, a prominent scholar of Indian literature, introduced the concepts of 'pro-phane' and 'metaphane' to describe the evolution and periodization of modern Indian literary history.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe coined the term 'Weltliteratur' (World Literature) in the early 19th century to describe the growing international exchange of ideas and literature.

Ipshita Chanda is a well-known scholar in comparative literature who has edited the 'Historiography in the Literary Studies' series, focusing on the methodologies of writing literary history.

Vamana is the primary proponent of the Riti school of Indian poetics, which emphasizes 'riti' (style or diction) as the soul of poetry.

Albrecht Weber, a German Indologist, is credited with writing one of the first systematic histories of Indian literature in the 19th century.

Meippaadu, a concept from the Tolkappiam, refers to the expression of inner feelings or emotions, which scholars often compare to Aristotle's concept of catharsis in the context of emotional release.

Jean Baudrillard is the French philosopher who introduced the concept of 'hyperreality', describing a state where the simulation of reality becomes more real than reality itself.

Ksemendra, the 11th-century Kashmiri scholar, is associated with the Aucitya school of Sanskrit poetics. Aucitya emphasizes appropriateness or fitness in literary composition. His works like 'Aucityavicaracarca' elaborate on how propriety and appropriateness characterize good poetry.

Dhvani theory involves the power of suggestion in language. Abhidha (denotation), Laksana (indication), and Vyanjana (suggestion) are the three powers of words. Angika is a type of 'abhinaya' (acting) in performance, not a linguistic aspect of Dhvani.

Swapan Majumdar is the author of 'Comparative Literature: Indian Dimensions', a key text that explores the application of comparative methodologies within the Indian context.

Fernand Baldensperger was a leading figure of the French School of Comparative Literature, which was known for its strict, often positivist, boundaries that frequently excluded folklore and oral traditions from 'serious' literary study.

Amiya Dev is a distinguished Indian comparatist who has advocated for a 'literary history from below', emphasizing the need to include marginalized and folk voices in the study of literary history.

The Telugu journal 'Sahiti' was heavily influenced by the Bengali journal 'Sabuj Patra', edited by Pramatha Chaudhuri, which championed the use of colloquial language in literature.

Hutchinson Macaulay Posnett published his influential book 'Comparative Literature' in 1886. It is often cited as one of the first books in English to use the term in its title.

Kiratarjuniam is a classic Sanskrit epic poem written by Bharavi. In Indian literary tradition, such long-form epic poems are classified as Mahakavya.

Buddhadeva Bose is a renowned Bengali writer and critic who contributed significantly to the discourse of comparative literature in India. His essay in the YCGL is a foundational text for the discipline in the Indian context.

Sara Suleri is the author of The Rhetoric of English India, a critical work examining colonial discourse and literature. Gauri Viswanathan is known for Masks of Conquest.

Anita Desai's Fasting, Feasting explores the cultural contrasts between Indian and Western lifestyles through the experiences of its characters. While other novels touch on similar themes, this is the most prominent example of the specific cultural contrast theme.

Comparative literature as an academic discipline began to take formal shape in France during the 1820s and 1830s, which corresponds to the third and fourth decades of the nineteenth century.

Jean-Marie Carré was a prominent French comparatist who defined the field as a branch of literary history focused on factual relationships between authors and literatures.

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay's Ananda Math is widely regarded as a foundational text for Indian nationalism, containing the song Vande Mataram.

Charu Gupta is a historian known for her work on gender, sexuality, and communalism in colonial India, specifically regarding the construction of nationalist identities.

Sujit Mukherjee was a pioneer in Indian literary historiography who argued for the necessity of developing indigenous frameworks to study Indian literature rather than relying solely on Western models.