http://rulrepository.ru.ac.bd/handle/123456789/147 2026-04-07T21:45:11Z 2026-04-07T21:45:11Z Hossain, Md. Sakhawat http://rulrepository.ru.ac.bd/handle/123456789/1076 2023-08-14T04:59:02Z 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z

Revisiting the Conrad Oeuvre an Eastern Gaze Hossain, Md. Sakhawat Against the backdrop of ongoing debate about Joseph Conrad being a colonialist or anti-colonialist and a conservative or liberal European writer, the present study offers a moderate view of Conrad examining his presentation of the East and the West from an Eastern perspective. While most critics have focused on aesthetic aspects, themes of human values, treatment of imperialism, moral perspectives and narrative methods in his works, a few have looked at his portrayal of Africa and the East. In his fiction, the presence of moral question, psychological reflections of characters, critical views of empire, anarchy and revolution, fidelity to duty and human experiences has made him one of the universally acknowledged modern writers. Most critics have considered the writer a genius, except some early reviewers, who, mostly British, consider his Eastern fiction too exotic, and also, some postcolonial critics who label him as Eurocentric and racist. Creating indeterminacy these debates, nonetheless, have made him appear as an ambivalent and complex writer. Much of this ambivalence and complexity arises, however, owing to his representation of different races of people in different settings of his fiction that comprise almost every continent of the world– Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia and America; and this has given his oeuvre a magical transnational aura. Thus, this dissertation appraises Conrad as a transnational writer, and even as a precursor of postcolonial literature. Drawing on Edward Said’s secular criticism, this study compares both his Eurocentric secular and contrapuntal presentation of the East with his secular criticism of the West from an Eastern perspective and offers a more nuanced point of view. It also investigates his pessimistic views about European politics of imperialism and war, Russian politics of autocracy, anarchy and revolution, and American globalization that caused widespread human suffering. The thesis is divided into six chapters. The first chapter offers a short overview of the thesis through the objective, rationale and literature review, and develops the theoretical framework drawing on Postcolonial criticism and Said’s secular criticism. The second chapter provides a short biography of the author from his childhood up to the start of the writing career and then connects the incidents of his life to his works. The third chapter examines his European perspective but at the same time traces his contrapuntal portrayal of the East and Africa, and secular criticism of imperialism. Then Chapter Four investigates Conrad’s political and social views of the West, and marks his critical skepticism about autocracy, anarchy and revolution. And the fifth chapter critically views Conrad’s Eurocentric colonial treatment of the East and at the same time explores his ambivalent and contrapuntal secular viewpoints. The sixth chapter concludes the thesis showing Conrad’s greatness as a writer and his relevance to our time. This Thesis is Submitted to the Department of English, University of Rajshahi, Rajshahi, Bangladesh for The Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

2020-01-01T00:00:00Z Arif, G. M. Javed http://rulrepository.ru.ac.bd/handle/123456789/1025 2023-08-03T05:04:01Z 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z

Adrienne Rich’s Poetry: Thematic and Theoretical Alignments Arif, G. M. Javed Writing at the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century, Adrienne Rich in her last four poetry books shows that she is still committed to exploring the multidimensional changes in politics and aesthetics that have ensued from the post-World War II collapse of modernist principles like rationality, progress, unified subjectivity, and transcendental or fixed meaning. Rich here chooses not to adopt the modernist mode of straightforward political didacticism she once preferred in her poetry but curves out a trajectory that embraces postmodern strategies like self-reflexivity, indirection, and indeterminacy, on the one hand, and tropes like pun, parody, irony, and repetition, on the other. These elements of postmodern poetic language offer her the possibility of exploring the theme of aesthetics and its connection with politics alongside her favorite themes like women, race, and history. Rich’s engagement with these themes can be interpreted from various theoretical standpoints, but most importantly from postmodernism, and also from feminism and postcolonialism where they are aligned with postmodernism. Adopting a postmodern approach in her final four poetry books in this postmodern period when the society has become all the more fragmented and uncertain, Rich has not only spoken for the marginalized in a lively manner, but she has also added a new dimension to her poetry. This Thesis is Submitted to the Department of English, University of Rajshahi, Rajshahi Bangladesh for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

2019-01-01T00:00:00Z Siddiquee, A. F. M. Rezaul Karim http://rulrepository.ru.ac.bd/handle/123456789/720 2022-08-07T04:34:22Z 1998-01-01T00:00:00Z

Scientific Thought in Robert Browning's Poetry Siddiquee, A. F. M. Rezaul Karim This is specifically a study of references and allusions to scientific facts and ideas in Browning's poetry, with the aim of finding out in detail how Browning responded to science, and whether his poetry has gained from science and, if yes, how and to what extent. The vigorously thriving science in the nineteenth century, which started the scientific age, was fas­cinating, but at the same time it caused not a little anxiety by its materialistic propensity and influence. The conflict or ambivalence that resulted is observable in Browning as in many other intellectuals of the age. Browning had a scientific temperament as well as an affinity for religion. In sundry poems he refers to evolution, but he overlooks or rejects its materialistic implications. It becomes for him a symbol of progress guided by a benevolent God. However, irrespective of this standpoint, he has also used expressions related to or suggestive of evolution as illustrative images. In anthropology the concept of evolution was fervently relied on in the study of man's origin and development, both physical and cul­tural. Some ideas and speculations about man's physical and cultural evolution from an earlier and lower form must have gone into the making of Browning's "Caliban upon Setebos". Caliban's religious speculations and practices point to some universal human characteristics and the human condition. With the advance of science it was being more and more strongly felt that nature is run by uniform laws which preclude the supernat­ural. But the supernatural includes not only ghosts, spirits, paranormal and psychic phenomena, and the occult but also such prerequisites of religion as divine being(s), the immortal soul, and the afterlife. Therefore, faith was weakening. An import­ant reason why Victorian men and women took to spiritualism was that they wished to find through it a proof of the immortality of the soul and thereby a support for their faith. Although Browning ardently believed in the immortality of the soul, he looks at spiritualism with a speculations and scientific spirit of investigation and explodes a fake medium in "Mr. Sludge, 'the Medium'"· In the nineteenth century there also flourished ed experimental physiology and medicine based a great deal on vivisection. Browning's clear antivivisection message in two poems hardly needs any comment, but the philosophical implica­tions in them have proved significant enough for a detailed discussion. "Tray" hints at the limitation of reductionism in providing knowledge, particularly in biological and psychologi­cal sciences; "Arcades Ambo" brings into the mind the inade­quacy of modern medicine. Browning's interest in making a psychological study of his characters is very well-marked. Five poems portraying mental aberrations have been selected for study. -They show the depth of his psychological knowledge, especially his insight into the unconscious mental processes and their effect on behaviors, which becomes the more remark­able by antedating Freud. In addition, miscellaneous scien­tific references and allusions belonging to this or that field of science have also been collected and discussed. They occur in Browning's poetry most often in an incidental manner, serv­ing as images for various ideas, and many of them have nothing to do with his belief or philosophy. This study has brought several facts to light: Browning responded to science ambiva­lently, being keenly interested by many scientific facts and ideas, but regarding its materialistic tendency with mistrust; he had a scientific outlook, which was evident in his doubting and questioning spirit; his knowledge of one or two scientific facts was inaccurate, but on more occasions he evinced bril­liant insight into scientific truths; and, above all, his use of scientific ideas and images has enriched his poetry to a considerable extent. Since the creation of Bangladesh the Nationalized Commercial Bas have been -playing a commendable role in achieving the economic growth of Bangladesh. Recently there is a greater change in banking sector in Bangladesh. Consultative Committee of Public Enterprise, Ministry of Finance, Bangladesh Bank and other researchers have emphasized the operational efficiency of the same. A host of research has been done on the various aspects of NCBs but as no such specific attempt is found, This Thesis is Submitted to the Department of English University of Rajshahi,Rajshahi, Bangladesh for degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

1998-01-01T00:00:00Z Islam, Md. Mominul http://rulrepository.ru.ac.bd/handle/123456789/313 2022-05-06T09:02:28Z 2015-01-01T00:00:00Z

Between History and Identity: Reading Amitav Ghosh and Orhan Pamuk Islam, Md. Mominul More than ever in its history of evolution novel as an elastic and promiscuous genre now crosses disciplinary boundaries and, in addition to delineating “universal” themes like love, betrayal, war, and death, illustrates the inevitable bearing of history and politics on literature. Along the line of this argument, this study intends to explore Amitav Ghosh and Orhan Pamuk in regard to their treatment of the issues encapsulated by “history” and “identity.” Following a comparative and historicizing mode this dissertation argues that Amitav Ghosh and Orhan Pamuk project transverse worlds with intersecting historical trajectories. Their major fictional and non-fictional works are found revolving around the themes of history and identity, or to be precise, issues of historiography and identity in the colonial and postcolonial periods. Although these issues appear as central engagements of most postcolonial and postmodern narratives, they become especially worth researching with respect to some particular writers like the ones I have selected because of their important locales, exceptional contexts, and unique mode of representation. Amitav Ghosh, loosely categorized as a postcolonial and postmodern novelist, takes his materials from the colonial and postcolonial political history and cultural canvas of India, South East Asia, parts of China, and parts of the Middle East, using the alternative lens of fiction vis-à-vis the officially recorded version. The complex issue of identity which may be political, geographical, economic, cultural, and individual in scope and nature appears as an overriding concern in his writings. In dealing with the issue in fictional terms he challenges histories influenced by the hegemony of the West, and writes, sharing the spirit of the movememt of writing history from below, a version of history that projects the predicament of individuals and is “humanized” by fictional characters. He shows how history is woven with hope and despair, with the elements of cross-cultural relation and the partitionist agenda. Sometimes, incidents of violence abounding in his writings make readers feel that the history of human civilization is the history of violence. While official histories often remain discreetly silent about the “violence chapter,” his fictional history deliberately breaks the spell of silence, for silence, to him, means complicity, encouraging the repetition of the “black spots” of history. Broadly in the same line of thought, Orhan Pamuk shows in microcosom what Ghosh captures in a wider spectrum of history. He invokes the romanticized past as “hyperhistory” and at the same time reveals the “black spots” in his country’s unspoken history. “A happy postmodernist” in his own words and a postcolonialist in the broad sense, he writes on the paradox and problematics of Turkish identity from the perspective of a revisionist reading of Ottoman and post-Ottoman history of Turkey coming to him from the sources of both internal and external Turkologists. The issue he handles becomes relevant to most eastern nations that were once under colonization in different forms and are still living the anxieties of identity. Although Turkey was never colonized, its present-day position in the global context is similar to that of the once colonized nations projected in Ghosh. The East-West conflict/compromise underpinning the Turkish condition, the country’s high vulnerability and sporadic resistance to neoimperialism, and the colonization of the psyche of the people compare obviously with the conditions of people depicted in the narratives of other postcolonial nations. Therefore, the novelists selected for this study can be “yoked together” (and of course, not by “violence”) for writing narratives of nations grappling with the question of identity in a similar vein; of course, their narratives ultimately go beyond the range of being “national allegories” and become a viable and vibrant space for “speaking to all.” Their major works project many characters who suffer from the cultural and human costs of boundaries arbitrarily drawn by colonial power structures in the creation of nationstates and attempt to foreground the cartographies people bear constantly in their mind. This study explores the canons of Amitav Ghosh and Orhan Pamuk with a view to studying in-depth the literary representation of the dynamics and formation of identity in the context of history related to the spread of transcontinental ocean trade, colonization, withdrawal of empires, rise of (ultra)nationalism, onslaught of globalization, clashes of cultures, East-West entanglements, and the role of colonial cities in shaping people’s sense of cultural belonging. The thesis is divided into five chapters: the first introducing the scope and parametre of the thesis with some theoretical discussions, the second and third on Amitav Ghosh and Orhan Pamuk respectively in relation to the area of this study, the fourth on comparative analysis of the two authors in the light of the discussions in chapters two and three, and the last for summing up and making concluding remarks. In the fourth chapter, the core analysis of the study, the points of divergence and convergence are explained for a comprehensive understanding of the authors who actually write in the great tradition of the “world novel,” not in the the novelistic tradition of a particular country or language. The way they critique both empire and nation as begetters of evils, man’s egoistic self, and disintegration of society constitutes a broad point of comparison. That their reflections on maps, boundaries, and partitioning of the past and the present bear some sort of resemblance is pointed out. Having a strong legacy of the eastern tradition replete with mystic stories and thoughts they invite comparison with each other in the use of mystic ideals to show the elusive nature of some of their characters’ quest for the self. In connection to their dealing with self-other binary, imperialist-native negotiation, East-West entanglement, convergence of the powerful and the powerless, and cultural conflict/negotiations from philosophical and mystic perspectives this study makes an emphatic use of the trope of master-slave relation as it comparably appears in Amitav Ghosh’s In an Antique Land and Orhan Pamuk’s The White Castle. It shows how both the writers illustrate “transcendence in bondage” model through their treatment of master-slave relation without admitting the superioty or inferiority of either party. Their use of art and colonial cities in the interpretation of history and identity, their sense of “worldliness,” and their writerly campaign for a post-nationalist world-order particularly underlie the comparative analysis. In the context of Pamuk a post-secularist and post- Islamist worldview comes up for discussion quite relevantly. Moreover, since artists are the presenters of people, the multiple and in-between identities of artists in the globalized world draw some focus in the analysis of their writings. While based on thematic analysis the study also takes note of these writers’ common theoretical leanings in the areas of postcolonialism, postmodernism and the other relevant cultural, political, and critical theories of the time. Metafictional self-reflexivity as a postmodernist trait in many of their works comes up for particular discussion as it connects with the identity of the authors in relation to their fictional universe. Key Terms: Amitav Ghosh, Orhan Pamuk, Fiction, History, Identity, Culture, Self, Other, Nationalism, Nation-state, Partition, Geopolitics, Postmodernism, Postcolonialism, Empire, Imperialism, East-west, Subalternity, Worldliness, Exile, Modernity, Secularism, Hybridity, Social Capital, Syncretism, Mysticism, Ottomanism/Neo-Ottomanism, Orientalism, Occidentalism, Self-Reflexivity, Historiography, and Metafiction. This thesis is Submitted to the Department of English, University of Rajshahi, Rajshahi, Bangladesh for The Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

2015-01-01T00:00:00Z