Browsing by Subject "Historiography"
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Item Historiography of the Holocaust: Traumatic Memory in Ellie Wiesel’s Night and Art Spiegelman’s Maus(Faculty of English, 2015) Thapa, Bishnu Bahadurhis dissertation explores the Holocaust literature from the perspective of traumatic memory of the victims. The memory of the survivors comes alive in diverse perspectives. The survivors and second generation of the Holocaust write in quite different ways. I have taken two different genres of literature: Autobiographical non-fiction and Memoir. It is normally considered that Autobiographical non-fiction alters facts changing names and genders of characters whereas memoirs are very true to facts using real names participants. But, Elie Wiesel’s Night, an autobiographical non-fiction, and Art Spiegelman’s Maus,a memoir, as the testimonies of the Holocaust.Night,by Elie Wiesel, is non-fiction from the perspective of the survivor who witnessed the harrowing Nazism. Similarly,Maus,by Art Spiegelman, is a graphic novel from the perspective of the second-generation of the Holocaust survivors. However, traumatic memory remains as the essence of the both literary works. InNight, Wiesel strives to show the Holocaust happenings and its psychological aftermath to the eye-witness. A youngnarrator tells the horrific story of deportation, burning people alive, and silence of the whole world at the cruel massacre of human being. InMaus, Spiegleman throws a flood of light on the psychology of the second generation. He also depicts that parent-child relation turns to be bitter when children of the Holocaust are deprived of the historical facts. While taking interview with his father, Vladek tells Artie not to include his story in the book, but Artie (Narrator/Writer) includes the story. It isnot a betrayal to his father but it depicts that Artie is sincere in the exploration the Holocaust. This dissertation presents the idea of how memory, history and trauma are the basic concerns of the Holocaust literature. The survivors of the Holocaust carry witness-testimony with them. Wiesel’s Nightis an example of survivors’ narrative. The survivor gives testimony to his traumatic memory. Not only the written-testimony, but the survivors’ unearthed experiences, which are to be disclosed, can be the real source for the study of the Holocaust. Spiegelman’sMauson the other hand, is an example of the transmission of traumatic memory into other generations. Artie, as the son of Vladek, interviews his father, gets Vladek’s traumatic memory and transfers itto readers. One thing that connects both these texts, at the thematic level, is the family-bond existing between the survivors and the second generation.Item John Harsey's Too Far To Walk as a Postmodernist Historiographic Metafiction(Department of English, 2021-12) Dhakal, LaxmiThis novel explores the personal history of John Fist, the male protagonist and national history of the then America showing the death of grand narratives like American dream, Enlightenment, capitalism, history, patriarchy. The story of John Hersey is the history of a youth who depicts 1970s in his fictional representation,he uses Postmodern philosophy as a critical response to assumptions allegedly present in regarding culture, identity, history, or language as the 1970s are remembered as an era when the women's rights, gay rights and environmental movements competed with the Watergate scandal, the energy crisis and the ongoing Vietnam War for the world's attention. Hersey uses characters like John Fist,Wagner, Breed, Malcom, Fistand Mona,and Margaret to reveal his inner psyche about the changes in society using their personal thoughts. The 1960s were years of protest and reform. Young Americans demonstrated against the Vietnam War. African Americans demonstrated for civil rights through which Academia like Sheldon College of America was not deprived. Women demonstrated for equal treatment as Mona and Margaret reveal their status in society to get freedom of burden being bounded to patriarchal society. The period of change came during the 1970s. For a while, these years remained tied to the social experiments and struggles of the 1960s. This change appeared in many parts of American society. It affected popular culture, education, and politics. Hersey negates official history of American Dream of safety and freedom for ladies and depicts rape as occurred incident in university by the friends of Fist .Hersey by emphasizing the problem of the philosopher cleanly distinguishing knowledge from ignorance, social progress from reversion, dominance from submission, good from bad, and presence from absence in 1970s’ American society .Item Kathryn Stockett's The Help as a Histographic Metafiction(Department of English, 2019) Khadka, SanuThis research blurring the distraction between fact and fiction as depicted in Kathryn Stockett's historical novel The Help. The novel describe the event of the Civil Rights Movement, the laws of segregation and intimidation and Taking theoretical insights on Historiographic Metafiction as proposed by Linda Hutcheon, and Hyden white this study reveals how this novel critique blurs the distinction between fact and fiction and presents the critique of racial stereotyping present in American society. A new rule has been set under the Civil Rights Movement according to this every citizen irrespective of class; creed or color will have access to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness through individual effort. This research concludes that The Help not only presents the history by narrating the story through the old maid but also analyses the history through the present day situation and the text revisits history by revising and questioning it.Item Re-writing the History of Partition in Chaman Nahal’s Azadi(Department of English, 2009) Ghimire, Raju SharmaChaman Nahal in Azadi rewrites the history of partition by focusing on those ugly aspects such as –rape, abduction, massacre, naked marches of women, very pathetic condition of refugees, merciless killing of women and children, looting, and destruction of lives, homes and properties and so on which were overlooked by traditional history. By bringing into fore the consciousness of sufferers, as witness, survivors and victims, Nahal critiques the meta-narrative of partition.Item Reflection of the Spirit of the Age in Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code(Department of English, 2019) Gharti Magar, LokendraThis paper explores the spirit of the age in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. Contemporary age is the age of privileging petty narratives, celebrating relativity of truth claims, promoting marginalized interests, questioning the historical fact, favoring plurality of truths, acknowledging story as history, accepting multiculturalism and adopting techniques of re-visiting and intertextuality in writing. Therefore, this thesis argues that Brown’s relativizing the truth claims of Christianity is actually an epitome of the spirit of our age. Since the novel demystifies Jesus Christ’s divinity, interrogates on formation of the Bible, displays distrust towards the Church, privileges non-linear order in history, destabilizes the historical facts, and adopts re-visiting the past and intertextuality. Jean Francois Lyotard’s mistrust of metanarratives; Linda Hutcheon’s critical concepts on history, theory and fiction; Stephen Greenblatt and Catherine Gallagher’s view on the relation between history and literature; Adrienne Rich’s notion of re-visiting; Foucauldian notion of effects of truth and Julia Kristeva’s notion of intertextuality form the theoretical base for the researcher’s observations. The researcher ultimately concludes that Brown’s divesting Christ’s divinity is the result of contemporary spirit of our age. Thus, The Da Vinci Code is the quintessential literary piece of writing based on contemporary spirit of the postmodern age.Item Representation of Madhesh Movement in Print Media: An Analytical Study of National Daily English Newspapers(Department of English, 2010) Shah, Dhananjay KumarThis dissertation paper discusses the print media’s coverage of Madhesh Movement (2007) in Nepal and how it might affect both public opinion and policy making on the topic. The thesis argues that the representation of Madheshi and Madhesh Movement by the Nepali press has been largely anti-Madheshi and unanalytical in many instances. Not all reportage is negative, and newspaper coverage would appear to be improving over time but the overwhelming majority of the comprehensive collection of newspaper articles, editorials and letters to the editor surveyed for this research sound prejudiced about Madheshi and Madhesh Movement are extremely unanalytical in nature, uncritically reproducing problematic statistics and assumptions about genuine grievances of Madheshi living in majority in the Terai. Although it is impossible to draw direct casual links between this kind of anti- Madheshi media coverage and State’s discriminatory attitude to look at Madheshi, the dissertation paper, in a nutshell, does argue that the two are at least mutually reinforcing and that the print media has a responsibility to be more balanced and factual in its reporting on this issue.Item Representation of the Subaltern in Upadhyay’s The Royal Ghosts(Faculty of English, 2014) Roka, BinodThe origin of the term subaltern traces back to the medieval age to apply to peasant class. However, the term incorporates the people of lower strata who are marginalized and oppressed. The subaltern studies, thus, tries to find out the real scenario of the people from the margin and to promote them to have their agency insuring their voice. Subaltern studies works through the idea of representation and misrepresentation and Spivak, Gramsci, Guha and many other are the contributors of subaltern studies Gramsci, one of the contributors of subaltern defines: “[. . . ] refers to those group in the society who are subject to hegemony to the ruling classes” (215). In The Royal Ghosts, Upadhyay has written various stories trying to represent the characters belonging to the subaltern group, but he fails to do so. Therefore, the present research work addresses on the issue of “Representation of the Subaltern in The Royal Ghosts.”aiming to explore the real condition of the characters in the text and deal how misrepresentation does not empower the people from the margin. For this,the researcher has used the methodology of representation and misrepresentation from the subaltern studies as the best tool in this research to deal on their problems of the characters from the subaltern. Subaltern people cannot speak for themselves. Instead, they have got to be represented. Not only this, there can be the case of misrepresentation including interpretation and appropriation of ideas to the point of triviality, semblance, or incoherence considered as abuse. There is misrepresentation of characters in the The Royal Ghosts by Upadhyay because the author seems to have his soft corner for the subalterns in making them the protagonists in his stories, but still he does not give them and voice. Instead he makes the elites talk for the subalterns. He makes them be audible only through the elites, which is what we talk as misrepresentation that makes the subalterns remain silent about their own situation.Item Train Massacre as a Metaphor for Genocidal Partition Violence: Reading Bhisam Sahni’s “The Train Has Reached Amritsar” and Khuswant Singh’sTrain to Pakistan(2006) Thakur, Hemant KumarViolence, which has been elided in the textbook history, receives central attention in revisionist historiography. The textbook history, besides overlooking violence, boosts up modern India’s image as a secular, modern and democratic nation. The historiographic sanitizingof Partition violencehas crept into much of the fiction on the Partition of 1947. Khushwant Singh andBhisham Sahni have also endeavoured to strengthen the same serene image of India, but thesanitizedimage comes at the cost of contemptuous and barbarous image of the Muslims and the Pakistanis. This work seeks to show how their fictitious ‘trains’ are instrumental in depicting theMuslimsand Pakistanis as fiends, who torture the simple- minded Indians. The obstreperous behaviour of the Muslims might seem real to credulous Indians, but to the incredulous few, especially those who are aware of the politics of the aesthetics of violence, thebiasedrepresentation of the Muslims in the fictional works of Singh (Train to Pakistan) and Sahni (“The Train has Reached Amritsar”) stick to their gizzard. When reviewed from the viewpoint of the revisionist historiography, which brings to the forethe politics of the representation of violence, both thesecanonizedworks merely participate in partisan politics: Indian emerge as civilized whereas the Pakistani Muslims get valorised as barbarians.Item Use of Historiographic Metafiction for the Purpose of Reconciliation in Jonathan Safran Foer’sEverything Is Illuminated(Department of English, 2020) Joshi, RupaJonathan Safran’s Everything Is Illuminated deals with the conflict and separation of generation primarily because of holocaust. Using holocaust experience as a memory Foer writes novel with the combination of multiple structures, language, unstructured setting and fragmentation with surprising comic tone. And these features establish this novel as a metafiction. Infact I argue that Foer uses metafictonin order to effect reconciliation or healing trauma. So, this research demonstrates how Everything Is Illuminatedis historio graphic metafiction and how this use of metafictional element allows Foer to bring fast and frozen reconciliation between generationsof character son the context of holocaust.That meant,how the history of Ukraineis analyzed from the perception of reconciliation.To study in depth this research is accomplished in the light of Linda Hutcheon’s “historio graphic me tafiction” which explores the role of history to reconstruct the fiction. Since this research allows to show elements of historio graphic me tafiction and blends some features of trauma theory to reflect the effect of reconciliation.To reach the final conclusion paper is divided into two parts, the first past of the paper explains how Everything Is Illuminatedis historiographic metafiction and second part demonstrates how this metafiction leads characters towards the reconciliation.Item Valorization of Subaltern Historiography in Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness(Department of English, 2018) Paudel, PrateekThis thesis is a critical discussion of Arundhati Roy’s novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness from the perspective of subaltern historiography. With the help of the reference from the text, the researcher finds Arundhati Roy challenging the mainstream official history and bringing the subaltern life as the subject matter. The major characters of the fiction belong to the dominated class: Anjum is a transgender character who is sexually marginalized; Saddam Hussain is marginalized due to his lower class. Tilottama is a semi-autobiographical exemplary subaltern character who is straightforward in making decisions of her life instead of living a dominated life. Roy brings various references from the history of Gujrat Riot, Assassination of Indira Gandhi, 9/11 attack, Kashmir insurgency and relates it to the organic life of civil society. She also presents various news reports and data regarding the problems faced by working class during Kashmir insurgency. She also brings various Hindu myths and poems in the fiction while describing the life of the subalterns. She takes along various news reports and data within the fiction making her work more authentic and trustworthy. She provides an alternative angle to view the history from the perspective of margins. It also concerns the national hegemony acted during Kashmir insurgency. The narration is in a fragmented form which is related to a fragmented life of subalterns. Hence, this fiction brings the issue of those shadowed subalterns that are neglected in the official history and calls for the inclusive historiography with the proper position for subalterns.