Agastya versus August: A Postcolonial War of Cultural Piracy

Authors

  • Vinay Bharat Assistant Professor, Department of English, Marwari College, Ranchi

Keywords:

Violent, Imperialistic, Cultural Discourse

Abstract

The theme of exile runs through most of the modern literature. This sense of exile is, in fact, aby product of cultural amalgamation. Reasons may be many. But this issue assumes an immediacy of concern with all post- colonial literature as they are an outcome of an unequal dialectic between a violent and rapacious imperialistic culture and a subjugated though often rich and complex native culture. Upamanyu Chatterjee’s English August: An Indian Story raises the issue of identity and cultural piracy in a post-colonial society and problematizes the issue by implicating the subject in a web of contradictory and opposing material and discursive practices. The focus of the novelist and my research paper is to show the mental conflict and plight of the urban Indians like August who are victims of an alien cultural discourse which has been internalized by them in the course of their educational cultural nurturing. They are culturally pirated folks.

References

Bill Aschcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post – Colonial Literatures, London, Rout ledge, 1989. p – 4.

Upamanyu Chatterjee, English August: An Indian Story .London. Penguin Books in association with Faber & Faber, 1988, p. 4

ibid., p.1 29.

ibid., p.15.

ibid., p.2

Gauri Viswanathan: Notes of a Native Son. (London, 1964) p – 14.

Upamanyu Chatterjee, English August: An Indian Story, op. cit, p – 2.

ibid., p.23

ibid., p.259

ibid., p.281

ibid., p.10

K. Bhabha: Of Mimicry and Men: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse, (1984). pp.125 – 133.

Upamanyu Chatterjee. English August: An Indian Story, op. cit.,p. 24

David Cooper. ed. Essay “Black Power” in the book The Dialectics of Liberation, (G. B., Penguin Books, 1968), p – 156 – 157.

Upamanyu Chatterjee, English August: An Indian Story, op. cit., p – 35.

ibid., p – 3

ibid., p – 93

ibid., p – 5

ibid., p – 5

ibid., p – 110

ibid, p – 149

ibid,p-26

ibid, p.153

R. P. Singh, The Concept of Anti- Hero in the Novels of Upamanyu Chatterjee. Bareilly. Prakash Book Depot.2010.pp.61-62

Downloads

Published

01.10.2012

How to Cite

Vinay Bharat. (2012). Agastya versus August: A Postcolonial War of Cultural Piracy. Journal of Teaching and Research in English Literature, 4(2), 20–24. Retrieved from https://journals.eltai.in/index.php/jtrel/article/view/JTREL040205

Issue

Vol. 4 No. 2 (2012): October

Section

Research Articles

License

Articles are the intellectual property of the authors. The Journal of Teaching and Research in English Literature does not take ownership of the copyright of any published article. Authors retain the copyright to their articles and may republish these articles as part of a book or other materials. However, while republishing an article published in JTREL, the author must ensure that the following conditions have been met:

  • The source of the publication (the title, volume, number and URL of the Journal) should be acknowledged.
  • The article will remain published on the JTREL website (except on the occasion of a retraction of the article) and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
  • We do not allow the distribution and transmission of plagiaristic works based on the articles that appear in our journal.
  • Readers may not use the articles for commercial purposes unless they get the written permission of the author and publisher. To disseminate copies for commercial purposes, write to editor.JTREL@gmail.com