English
Literature in the Classroom: Issues of Multiculturalism and Critical Strategies
- Dr. S. Sridevi
Abstract
This paper is an attempt to analyze
current scenario in the Indian Arts and Science Colleges that teach English
literature as an undergraduate and post graduate course. We have borrowed the
canonical texts and the methodologies of teaching from western universities who
thrive mostly in a monolingual culture. When English literature is studied in the
multilingual India, we have a different location in our minds for English
language and the literature it creates. English in India has perhaps replaced
Sanskrit as a second or pan-Indian language keeping its elite position. In the classroom the teacher has the tough job
of first paraphrasing the text, and then help the student appreciate its
literary value and later introduce the student to look at the text from a
critical perspective. The paper studies the difficulties faced by the teacher
as well as the students, not blaming any side, but locating these issues in a
broader, social framework of history. At
the same time it emphasizes the need to introduce the mother tongue into the
class room; the need to introduce critical reading strategies to enhance
critical skills of students that can bring changes in society.
…………………………..
English
Literature in the Classroom: Issues of Multiculturalism and Critical Strategies
- Dr.
S. Sridevi
This paper moves within the
framework of ideologies made exponent by three critics: two Indian and one
Western. This is done to create a comparison between Indian scholarship and
western scholarship on questions of English literature. In India, English language and its literature
hold an elite position, whereas English as a language rose from humble origins
in England and its literature was ignored for a long time by the British
intelligentsia. During the nineteenth and early twentieth century, English literature
became part of the curriculum, partly to create academic cannons, and partly to
teach the language to the colonies to enable better communication and develop a
taste for western thinking habits and culture.
Indian post colonialism differs
from the African model in the way India received English language and the
culture and tradition it carried with itself. Sisir Kumar Das states how English replaced Sanskrit. Indian
scholarship and socio-cultural factors have actually let in English, let it
become a pan-Indian framework of reference, actually without replacing
Sanskrit, as today’s socio-political ideologies and practices convey. India has
been by default a multicultural society. We are “multicultural by virtue of
being Indians. It is our natural legacy from the past” (Rustom Barucha in “Thinking through Culture” 72). Cultural forms in India cannot strictly
be pinned down to a linguistically defined State. The domination of language
theories and studies have brought in a new awareness that ethnicity is decided
by the language of a people. National projection of States, their indigenous
cultures, traditions and diversity is a post colonial political sphere built by
the construct of democracy in nation/state model.
To the Indian mind which was
comfortable with the concept of multilingualism, accepting one more language
was very easy, especially, if the language paved ways to status, power, and
money. From the time of Macaulay, there has been a practical and materialistic
agenda behind English learning from which the nation did not attempt to change
much. English medium schools and spoken English are ways indian middle class
tried/tries to establish itself in a globalised society, and Colonialism
followed by globalization has helped English language retain its social/political
power in India. There are many schools of thought in the way we have to
approach this language and one such is to teach only English without its
literature. But English is not a classical language like Tamil, Latin, Sanskrit
or Greek. It revolves around thousands of peculiar sentence patterns and phrases – simply called the usage. The best
way to absorb these unique features is to become familiar with the creative
works in the language. Hence the teaching of English literature was a smart
plan on the part of British officials, as they understood the special feature
of their young language which was looked down for centuries as ‘local.’
History and circumstances, and the
ambition of the British people put the language at a seminal point in the world
map. The language of the common people, of the groundlings of England, the language
created by umpteen writers, publishers, printers and the common man reached the position of an international
language. The western universities’ meticulous work on dictionaries and the
publishing industry’s finicky approach to edit, and the importance given to research in the
western universities have given the background support to English language.
More than that is the will of the people who have contributed in creating an
academic frame work to English – the way books are written with care, the way
each word with its variety of spellings is accepted, the way definitions are
given, the thousands of grammar books that are written, the effective use of
the internet to spread English grammar, sounds, vocabulary and so on. There is
tremendous hard work, concentrated commitment and planning behind the way
English is put in the forefront. Any language that has to be projected as an
international language needs these back up political, academic and people
support. English wanted to replace Latin in Europe, which was the earlier
international academic language like Sanskrit in India. English universities
took up the mammoth task of elevating
the language and its literature. English critics worked concurrently and Mathew
Arnold very effectively put Shakespeare along with Homer and Dante calling them the greatest writers of
Europe. Shakespeare, who could not probably read Latin and Greek, who was criticised
by the University Wits or educated writers for his lack of knowledge of the classical languages,
the man who gave a place to all the local English words in his dramas, was
finally proclaimed as the greatest genius of all times in England. The literary
and academic past, that the English language did not have, the tradition
it lacked was recreated by launching Shakespeare as the most prestigious
academic cannon. He became a ‘touch stone’ – a model. English literature came
to the colonies in this package - the ‘great’ writers like Shakespeare, Milton
and Wordsworth were introduced to Indian students with much adoration and
prestige which is practiced even today, as Indian universities and colleges adopt
the method of memorization instead of
research. Memorization retains academic structures and helps to preserve the Establishment
as the Right. Whereas, academic research is progressive and quickly points out
the structures of construction and helps the Establishment to change. The
western universities have gone far beyond in the way they approach the
Elizabeth Age and Romantic Age. Professors have begun to ‘reread’ these works,
researching deep into the socio-cultural backgrounds of the texts written
during this period. India still teaches
these Ages as they were taught in the earlier twentieth century. American academia encouraged the practice of
‘new criicism’ and the fullbright
scholars took the practice of close readings to many parts of the world. To
this day, this Coleridgean, Richardian model of formalism has helped scholars
acquire a sound grounding of literary texts and their structures. The only
issue with formalism in the Indian class room is that it expects a very high
command over the language in which the literary work is written. It is here we
need to understand our location in the globalised map and customise methods
that will suit our class rooms. We have to accept our thinking patterns and our style of
functioning and also understand the western academic world. This paper first
takes the reader to the Indian scenario and then the western space and then aims
at a kind of a solution to address contemporary challenges faced the faculty
and students in the college class room.
Sisir Kumar Das says in his book studying
the medieval history of Indian literatures, A
History of Indian Literature 500-1399: From the Courtly to the Popular: “Like Greek,
Tamil has an uninterrupted
history; the relation between modern and ancient Tamil is more or less similar
to that of the Attic Greek and modern Greek” (Sisir Kumar Das 4). But “Sanskrit was the widely accepted
pan-Indian language” (Sisir Kumar Das 5). Various indigenous languages began developing
in India that the need for a common link language became important and Sanskrit became a necessary bond for the
cultural unity of India, says Das quoting Burrow. It was a pan-Indian dominating
language confined to the educated class, used for legal, philosophical, and
academic purposes in Indian sub-continent till the end of 12th
century. It was taught and cultivated
all over India and Tamil Nadu had several centres of Sanskritic education.
Sisir Kumar Das compares the role of Sanskrit education to the current English
education in India.
Is English a second language like
Sanskrit or is it a foreign language with totally new images and metaphors?
Will it merge with the local languages or remain an elite language always?
Every Indian language has gained new words from English as it received words
from Sanskrit earlier. It has the additional advantage of being a gender and
hegemony neutralizer. Its temperament suits the current political ideology of
equality and democracy. It serves the
linguistic purpose of nation / state framework of a subcontinent, as it stays
away from the regional languages and approaches all languages in the same
manner, in a neutral way.
We can say that India simply
shifted from one pan-Indian language to another or built another parallel
system of communication for practical conveniences. Sanskrit “did not have a
broad mass base” (Sisir Kumar Das 7). Instead Tamil developed as a great
popular literature in the form of Bhakthi literature. Sanskrit remained the prestigious
scholarly language while Tamil literature was the literature of the people.
Buddhism adopted Sanskrit as the second language in Tamil Nadu often in line of
Pali.
English quickly replaced Sanskrit
or grew as an equal power as the official second language in Indian class rooms and an
educated class emerged speaking English
during the late 19th and early centuries. English became the
elite language of India used for legal, academic and even for political
purposes. There also has emerged another class of Indians who study the
language and literature for economic benefits. Far from viewing English as a
symbol of colonialism in the line of Gauri Viswanathan’s Masks of Conquest, this class looks at it as an opportunity for
social justice, economic welfare and as
window to the world. Indians have shown “fascinating manifestations of
linguistic and literary amphibianism, amphidexteriam, ambilingualism, or
ambivalence” (Harish Trivedi in Colonial Transactions: English Literature and India 178). Political insertion of the British has
brought in this multitudinal linguistic practices in the country and here the
way Sanskrit grew into a second language and the way English has become the
second language is different from each other. The former has grown in a natural
manner while the latter has sprung up suddenly. What were the modes of exposure
to and reception by Indian students of English literature? – becomes an
important question. “What was the time span of such reception, and which
authors, movements in English literature
were received rather more warmly and congenially in India and others?” asks
Trivedi (178).
The teaching of English
literature in India has always been a problematic (Trivedi 199). Three thousand years of our continuous
literary history has always been a multilingual one. Sanskrit, Prakrit and Pali
have existed simultaneously in discourse and literatures. As South Indians, we
can add Tamil also to this list and the Sangam literature proves this point.
The Buddha spoke Pali language making it an international vehicle carrying his
ideologies to various countries. Kalidasa’s characters Sakuntala and
Dushyanta spoke Prakrit in their
Sanskrit dramas. Many varieties of apabhransha during the middle ages was a
reversal Sanskritization from which modern Indian languages have evolved. Apart
from Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian too have entered our continent and have
either merged or created languages. Also these languages performed the elite
pan-Indian functions and duties of Sanskrit (Trivedi 201). The entry of English
also became just a historical pattern of our culture.
The English teacher in India
first of all becomes an effective paraphraser. Trivedi gives us the example of
Edward Thomson, an English man who was working in Wesleyan College,
Bankura, who prided himself on his
prowess and popularity as the champion paraphrase of Shelley and Keats. The
teacher who could supply equivalents for the original phrases were/are considered
great by the students. Prafulla Chandra Roy was such a teacher remembered by
Trivedi. The aim of a student enrolling in English Literature in India is not
to master British or American literatures, but to become proficient in the English language. Meenakshi Mukherjee
classifies these students as belonging to non-E types. Harish Trivedi
interprets that these non-E students are Non-English medium students (203). The
education scenario today at the tertiary level would prove to any one that
English medium has not created students who love reading literatures in
English. Trivedi writes from Delhi and
his understanding of the role of English medium schools in constructing a
cultural taste for English literature.
Any literature contains an
ideology, having the most intimate relations to questions of social power, if
read from a Marxian perspective. The growth of English Studies in the late
nineteenth century will explain the role of economic power attached to English
literature. (Terry Eagleton 20). Literature would rehearse the masses in the
habits of pluralistic thought and feeling; teach them the moral riches of a
middle class civilization; curb collective political action. Literature works
primarily with emotions and experience. Victorian Handbook for English teachers
believed that English literature helped to promote sympathy and fellow feeling among all classes (Terry Eagleton
22). In England, English as an academic subject
was first institutionalized not in the universities, but in the Mechanic’s
Institutes, working men’s colleges and extension lecturing circuits. “English
was literally the poor man’s classics – a way of providing cheapish liberal
education for those beyond the charmed circles of Oxford and Cambridge” (Terry Eagleton
23). The impoverished experience of the
mass people can be supplemented by literature. Transmission of moral values was
an essential part of this ideological project. The rise of English as exemplified by Mathew
Arnold, F.R. Leavis reflected this.
Literature became the moral idea of the modern age. The softening and
humanizing effects of English became well known that more women enrolled for
the course. “The era of the academic establishment of English is also the era
of high imperialism in England” (Terry Eagleton 24).
Eagleton surveys thus the
genesis of English literary studies that sprang from humble origins and rose to
a power at the academic world due to political and economic reasons. I.A.Richards
worked on methodologies to teach English in the class room. He arrived at the
ways to interpret many kinds of meanings in his book Four Kinds of Meanings. He tried to deconstruct the canonization of
literary texts in his book Practical
Criticism. English teaching in India froze at this level of history and
even today continues close readings in classrooms. Question papers in our
colleges are asking questions based on these close readings. I.A.Richards
recommended close readings to monolingual people who read their local
literature, and our students depend more on ‘guides’ than the western students.
When we imported this method of close readings to India, it either became too
easy for the elite students or it became too difficult for non-elite students.
We expect our students to write detailed analytic explanations of a foreign
literature in a language that is foreign
to them.
Journals like Scrutiny was established by F.R.Leavis
who believed in the concept of being essentially English. Later T.S. Eliot
brought the reputation of Metaphysical poetry up and relooked at Milton and
introduced French symbolist poetry in England. Eliot defined the close circle
of literature as tradition.
How do we take literary
pieces to students who are culturally far away from these historical
backgrounds? English teachers have to
accept the multilingual nature of the Indian mind, and use effective Indian
illustrations to handle close readings in the class room. A formalistic/new
critical reading of an English text is not possible for an Indian student who
is not steeped in the structures of English to find out the way the language is
used in a ‘different’ way other than usual. Literature may use peculiar language
and the reader has to be aware of this deviation to appreciate it. All literary
works are rewritten by the readers who read them. Do our students do this kind
of rewriting when they read English literary works in the class room anymore?
Literature is a political force with abilities to transform the society. As long as students are sensitive to the
forces of literature, the class room becomes an interesting academic sphere.
Our teachers have to take
English literature to the students explaining its social, philosophical and political
content too. Romantic poets who are read by our students with love were
political activists themselves. But in
their writings we do not really see politics openly expressed. Literature
contained symbols as our Tamil movies revealed during the sixties and
seventies, if we extend the word literature to films, and it is this symbolism
makes it difficult to teach Wasteland. Once we help students spot out the
symbols, the poem becomes dynamic with interpretations. Art is
not away from reality, but reflects real life, as Aristotle put it. Every piece
of literature in any language can be
explained at two levels: first as a universal piece; second as a particular
piece, an experiential level. In the class room both the universal and the
particular has to be brought in together.
To explicate the particular
the teacher needs the following: background history, biography, social
structures, politics, current ideologies of the period, methods of reading or
interpretation – feministic / post colonial / post structural readings, universality
or values represented, the text itself, the myths present in it, and new critical interpretations. Research becomes very essential for a teacher
to explain and paraphrase meanings followed other interpretation. The teacher
gets very little support from the student in interpretation of any kind.
This is a crucial space
where the power of the mother tongue comes in.
Thinking will happen only if the mind thinks in a language which it
knows. Critical strategies will work very well in the class room if we make it
multilingual, reflecting our social and cultural set up. The class room for a
literature student cannot always thrive
in a monolingual set up.
Even in colleges where the
students hail from English speaking backgrounds, the curriculum has been much
simplified to suit the needs of students. Colleges prescribe two or three
poems/essays/short stories; one novel; one drama etc. for a paper even for a
Post Graduate Class. Each poet is represented by one poem. Extra readings are
perceived to be very difficult. Students
are not taught how to ‘read’ these texts from different perspectives; instead
the texts are summarized. This situation
has been created as India looks at English literature more as a route to a job
than as an aesthetic area or knowledge resource to do research.
Research in English
literature has not entered the class room at all. I.A. Richards could work
along with his students. Such a climate is not created in Indian academia.
There is a big gap between a teacher who has scores of journal publications and
most of his/her students who cannot understand any of the paper or conference
proceedings written by his teacher. These issues can be solved in a simple manner
to a certain extent. Instead of prescribing only one poem by a poet, we can
prescribe five poems. I have tried this in the class room. Students naturally
begin to compare one poem with the other. They start noticing the repeated
ideas, words and symbols. Then we can tell them what is not discussed by the
author. The other questions we can discuss are: How are women represented? /
How are poor people represented? / What is the assumption in the text? etc. Respecting the multilingual setup as
discussed earlier, we can introduce the mother tongue during these discussions.
It will liberate the students from their mental blocks to the way they keep
English literature as belonging to some other culture. We have to encourage
students to acknowledge the universality of any literature in spite of the
caste/class/gender/race differences. Also these methodologies will make the course
more attractive to the student community.
This paper proposes the
hypothesis that the scattered use of the mother tongue in the English
literature UG and PG class rooms will help our students to understand concepts
in an easier manner. It also strongly recommends that the teacher brings in
various critical strategies to interpret the text and help the class room
become interactive. The paper functions on the postulation that once criticism
is introduced into the class room along with the careful use of the mother tongue,
the student will internalise the subject and assimilate it better than before.
Works Cited
Das, Sisir
Kumar. A History of Indian Literature
500-1399: From the Courtly to the Popular. Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2005.
Print.
Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: an Introduction. Second
Edition. Great Britain: Blackwell Publishers, 1996.Print.
Trivedi,
Harish. Colonial Transactions: English Literature and India. Manchester
University Press, 1993. Print.
Barucha,
Rustom. “Thinking through Culture.” India: Another Millennium. Ed. Romila Thapar. Penguin Books, 2001.
Print.
