English Literature in the Classroom

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.

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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 12^th 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 19^th 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.