Ways of Reading with Reference to Literature in India

Paper Code: 
WMS-322
Credits: 
4
Contact Hours: 
60.00
Max. Marks: 
100.00
Objective: 

This course is intended to help students to ways of reading through different periods of Literature so as to study Literature and Women’s Studies integral to each other and get a glimpse of the perception of women through these periods.

12.00

Women’s Studies in relation to Sanskrit literature: representation of social life and patriarchy – Ramayan and Mahabharat

12.00

Ways of Reading and Reconstruction characterization of women in Ancient Indian literary text – Shakuntala

9.00

Medieval Period

The genre of folk forms and position of women in it.

Oral Narratives as medium of Women’s knowledge making. eg Vrata katha, Savitri’s story

Emergence of female voice in Bhakti Literature: Mira, Mahadevi Akka (A.K. Ramanujam’s critical piece), Chokyachi Mahari, Bahina Gai.

Female voice in Sufi tradition – Amir Khusro, Rabia, Lal Dev, Bulleh Shah, Shah Hussain.

12.00

Autobiographies of women: Tarabai Shinde and Mahashveta Devi

Study of the genre in the 19th century; Readings:Tanika Sarkar, Meera Kosambi, Meenakshi Mukherjee

12.00

The Controversies: The memoirs of Ismat and Manto over the court case on their writings about women.

Contemporary Women’s writings in other Indian languages: Ashapoorna Devi, Nabaneeta Dev Sen ( Bangla), Indira Goswami, Tilottama Misra (Asamiya), V Geeta (Tamil).

Essential Readings: 
  1. Phaneeshwar Renu’s Maila Aanchal, NBT, New Delhi, 2010
  2. Monika Gupta (ed.) Women Writers in the Twentieth Century Literature, Atlantic Publishers and Distributers, New Delhi, 2008
  3. Pramod K Nayar, Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory, From Structuralism to Ecocentric, Longman an imprint of Pearson, Delhi 2010
  4. Anita Myles, Feminism and the Post-Modern Indian Women Novelist in English, Sarup & Sons, New Delhi 2006
  5. Guerin W L, Labor E, Morgan L, et al, A handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature, pp 222-235, 350-368
  6. Bijay Kumar Das, Twentieth Century Literary Criticism, APB, Delhi 2004 pp 143-158
  7. Ritu Menon (ed.) Women who Dared, NBT, New Delhi, 2008
  8. Shashi Deshpande: That Long Silence, Penguin, New Delhi, 1989
  9. Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruction, Theory and Criticism after Structuralism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982; London: Routledge, 1983
References: 
  1. Romila Thapar’s Shakunta, Kali for Women, New Delhi 2010 pp 1-169, 218-271
  2. Susie Tharu, Tracing Savitri’s Pedigree: Victorian Racism and the Image of Women in Indo-Anglian Literature, in Sangari K and Vaid S (ed.) Recasting Women, Zubaan, an Imrint of Kali for Women, New Delhi, 2009, pp 254-268
  3. Manto’s memoirs, Meena Bazaar
  4. Tarabai Shinde’s Stri Purush Tulana in in Susie Tharu and Lalita K (ed.) Women’s Writing in India, 600 BC to Twentieth Century, Volume I & II, OUP, New Delhi, 2009, pp. 223-234
  5. Susie Tharu and Lalita K (ed.) Women’s Writing in India, 600 BC to Twentieth Century, Volume I & II, OUP, New Delhi, 2009 Introduction Vol. I pp 1-38
  6. C Rajgopalachari’s Ramayan and Mahabharat
  7. Ismat Chugtai’s Tedhi Lakeer
  8. Shemeem Burney Abbas, the Female Voice in Sufi Ritual: Devotional Practices in India and Pakistan, University of Texas Press, Austin, 2002 pp 239-

 

 

Academic Session: 
2015-16
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