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Literature is a group of works of art made up of words. Most are written but
some are passed on by word of mouth. Literature usually means work of poetry and
prose that are especially well written. There are many different kinds of literature
such as Poetry, plays or novels. They can also be put into groups through the
language historical Period, origin, genre and subject. The word literature comes from
Most of the earliest works were Epic poem. Epic poems are long stories about
are two famous Greek Poems by Homer. There were passed down through speaking
and written down around the 8th century BC. Literature can also mean imaginative for
English literature began in old English with the epic poem Beowolf, which
dates from sometime between the 8th to the 11th centuries. It is not written in
language people can understand today, but there are several good translations into
modern English. It is the most famous work in old English, despite being set in
Scandinavia. The poem is written with no rhymes but with alliteration. The next
important landmark is the works of the poet Geoffrey chaucer especially 'The
The seed of Indian writing in English was sown during the period of the
British rule in India. Now the seed has blossomed into an evergreen tree, fragrant
flowers and ripe fruits. The fruits are being tasted not only by the native people, but
they are also being chewed and digested by the foreigners. It happened only after the
Gardeners like Tagore, Sri aurobindo, R.k. Narayan, Raja Rao – to name a
few, looked after the tender plant night and day. In modern time, it is guarded by a
number of writers who are getting awards and accolades all over the world.
Indian English literature is the body of work by writers in India who write in
the English language and who native or co-native language could be one of the
numerous languages of India. Its early history began with the works of Michael
Madhusudan Dutt followed by R.K. Narayanan, Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao who
contributed to Indian fiction in the 1930s. It is also associated with the works of
members of the Indian diaspora who are of Indian descent. It is frequently referred to
as Indo-Anglian Literature.
Indian English Literature has a relatively recent history, being only one and a
half centuries old. The first book written by an Indian in English was Travels of Dean
In its early stages, Indian English Literature was influenced by the western
novel. Early Indian writers used English unadulterated by Indian words to convey an
gems of Indian writing in English. From being a singular and exceptional, rather
gradual native flare-up of geniuses, Indian writing has turned out to be a new form of
Indian writers, poets, novelists, essayists and dramatists have been making
world literature. Wide ranges of themes are dealt within Indian writing in English.
While this literature continues to reflect Indian culture, tradition, social values and
even Indian history through the depiction of life in India and Indians living elsewhere,
recent Indian English fiction has been trying to give expression to the Indian
Prof. M.K. Naik remarks “A one of the most notable gifts of English education
to India is prose fiction for though India was probably a fountain head of story-telling,
freedom struggle, social realism, individual consciousness and the like. This literary
itself as a remarkable force in world fiction. This has been achieved by novelists who
sought to prove their inner creative by mastering the intricacies of the language and
Indian- sub continent. Raja Rao famously argued in 1938, in the preface to his novel
make up like Sanskrit or Persian was before but not of our emotional make-up. We
are all instinctively bilingual, many of us in our own language and in English. We
cannot write like the English. We should not. We can only write as Indians. Our
method of expression will someday prove to be as distinctive and colorful as the Irish
or the American.
Indian English Literature is two hundred years old. Sri Aurobindo stands like a
huge oak spreading its branches over these two centuries. The contribution of Sri
Autobindo as a perfect writer and craftsman is undoubtedly great. He is the first poet
in Indian English writing who has given the re-interpretation of myths. Sri Aurobindo
His creative genius is so much accounting and his literary output is so much rich and
varied that the phrase ‘Myriad-minded’, which Mathew Arnold had used for him
shakespear can apply him also. He won Nobel prize for literature in 1913, for his
novelist and short-story writer. He interweaves the centrality of the novel keeping in
and expressed artistically in his novels. His first five novels are set against Indian
social sense in the perspectives of setting both in India and America’s Hawaii island
The triumvirs Milk Raj Anand, Raja Rao and R.K. Narayan were the novelists
who stabilized and fortified the Indian English English Fiction with their ample works
and unique literary style. Each used its own version of an English freed from the
The majority of mulk Raj Anand’s novels bring to the limelight of the
inequalities of society and trials and tribulations of the less fortunate. Untouchable,
coolie, The village and The private life of an Indian prince addresses the evils existing
awareness of the inequality that existed in India. He also advocated solutions for the
issues.
R.K. Narayan is another celebrity author who enjoys a unique position in the
the socio-comic aspects of the ordinary Indian’s family and idiosyncrasies of human
which form the crux of his novels. The greatest merit of his language and style lives
upholding these themes in his novels. Women in Raja Rao’s novels suffer from
domestic injustice and tyrannical tradition, but the writer suggests no way his novels
English. Today women are seen establishing their identity in almost all walks of life
and they have heralded a new consciousness in the realm of literature too. Feminism
themes have also been used by authors like Nayantara Sahgal and Rama Mehta.
A novel is a narrative work of prose fiction that tells a story about specific
the most clearly defining characteristics of a novel. Unlike works of epic poetry, it
tells its story using prose rather than verse, unlike short stories, it tells a lengthy
form and which is typically published as a book. The present English word for a long
work of prose fiction derivers from the Italian novella for “new”, “news”, or “short
story of something new”, itself from the Latin novella, a singular noun use of the
Walter Scott made a distinction between the novel, in which “events are of
accommodated to the ordinary train of human events and the modern state of society”
and the romance, which he defined as “a fictitious narrative in prose or verse; the
thousand years”, with its origins in classical Greece and Rome, in medieval and early
modern romance and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella. Since the 18 th
century, the term “novella”, or “novelle” in German, has been used in English and
“Mursaki shikibu’s Tale of Genji” an early 11th century Japanese text, has
sometimes been described as the world’s first novel, but there is considerable debate
over this – there were certainly long fictional works much earlier. Spread of printed
books in china led to the appearance of classical Chinese novels by the Ming dynasty.
moder period authors of historical narratives would often include inventions rooted
and traditional beliefs in order to embellish a passage of text or add credibility to an
opinion.
The novel is today the longest genre of narrative prose fiction, followed by the
novella. The requirement of length has been traditionally connected with the notion
Anita Desai is a critically lauded 20th century writer, and her novels on the
experiences and inner lives of Indian men and women are known for their
compassion, eloquence and lucid prose. Having come of age when India achieved
independence in 1947, Desai weaved politics and gender issues into her works.
Anita Desai was born on June 24, 1937. She is an Indian novelist and the
Technology. As a writer she has been shortlisted for the Booker prize three times. She
received a Sahitya Akademi Award in 1978 for her novel fire on the mountain from
the Sahitya Akademi, India’s National Academy of letters. She won the British
Toni Nime and a Bengali businessman, D.N.Mazumdar. Her Bengali father first met
her German mother while he was an engineering student in pre-war Berlin, and they
got married during a period when it was still unusual for an Indian man to marry a
Europeon Woman. Shortly after therir marriage, they moved to new Delhi, when
Desai was raised up with her two elder sisters and brothers.
She was a student at Queen Mary’s Higher Secondary school in Delhi and
received her B.A in English literature in 1957 from the Miranda House of the
University of Delhi. The following year she married Ashvin Desai, the director of a
computer software company and author of the book between Eternities: Ideas on life
Desai. Her children were taken to Thul for weekends, where Desai set her novel, The
village by the sea. For that work she won the 1983 guardian children’s fiction prize, a
Desai published her first novel, cry the peacock in 1963. She considers clear
light of day her most autobiographical work as it is set during her coming of age and
In 1984, she published In custody- about an urdu poet in his declining days-
which was shortlisted for the Booker prize. In 1993, she became a creative writing
The 1999 Booker prize finalist novel Fasting, Feasting increased her
peculiarity. Her novel The Zigzag way, set in 20th century Mexico, appeared in 2004
and her latest collection of short stories, The Artist of Disappearance was published in
2011.
Desai has taught at mount Holyoke college, Baruch college and Smith college.
She is a fellow of the Royal society of literature, the American Academy of Arts and
In 1993, her novel In custody was adapted by Merchant Ivory productions into
an English film by the same name, directed by Ismail Merchant, with a screenplay by
Sharukh Husain. It won the 1994 President of India Gold medal for best picture and
Her characters are often cocooned, living in their own selves, comfortable in their
skin and at times restless like any other characters would be.
Her novels are bleak but sometimes that is the truth about human nature. There
is also the unknown kindness that makes itself visible in her works – from the
relationship of the poet and his fan in “In Custody” to the delicate balance between a
great- grandmother and her great – grandmother and her great granddaughter in “Fire
on the mountains”, which gets maintained over the course of the book.
Desai’s characters are human. They are awkward, shy, boisterous and often
just want to live their lives cocooned without any interference from the world. They
“In custody” the subtlety of a poet’s last days and lost grandeur is depicted
with such pathos, that even we could not help but cry in some parts. The relationship
between the poet and his long time admirer is so delicate and so factual, that one
“Fire on the mountain” begins with an intrusion. The characters think they are
different from each other, till their similarities come to tha surface along with the hurt,
pain, kindness, only ending in Tragedy. The book has less dialogue and more beauty
in the way the characters behave and silently ponder over the events unfolding around
them.
Anita Desai’s books probably are set in different times and worlds, and yet
they ring so true for present times. The pathos of “In Custody” to the grimness of life
in “Fasting, Feasting”, her novels are not for the Weak-hearted. Every book of hers is
a gem to be cherished and kept and to go back to and admire as the years pass by.
coupe, Idris: keeper of Light and Better man. She has also written a poetry collection
and non- fiction books to her credit. Recently she stepped into crime genre with her
largely set in India and the united states, and often focus on the experiences of south
Asian immigrants. Her novels fall into multiple geures, including literary fiction,
Jhumpa Lahiri is an American writer with Indian origins. Her stories capture
the nostalgia faced by immigrants and have a distinct Indianness to them. ‘The
Namesake’, her debut novel is well acclaimed and her latest one, ‘The Lowland’ got
Kiran Desai is the daughter of Anita Desai. Her first novel, Hullabaloo in the
Guava orchard, won the Betty Trask award. Her second book, The Inheritance of
Loss, won the 2006 Man Booker P:rize, as well as the 2006 National Book critics
Kamala Surayya is a prominent writer and poet who has written both in
Malayalam and English. She was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in literature in 1984.
Her writings are personal and she did not shy away from topics such as female sexual
awakening.