MEG-10: English Studies in India

This course aims to sensitize learners in various aspects and domains of Indian English writings and writers such as, Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao, Anita Desai, , and Raja Ram Mohun Roy amongst others, and reflects on the importance of Indian English literature. It examines the history of the institutionalization of English Studies in India, traces the beginnings of Indian English Poetry, Indian English Novel, different Englishes practiced across the globe, while critically analyzing the problems of teaching and learning English Literature. It also questions the western canon, looks at the emerging Indian literary Canon and talks about decolonizing the mind.

WEEKS

PDFs

Week -1

Unit-1: Entry of English: A Historical Overview

Unit-2: Macaulay, Raja Ram Mohun Roy and Charles E Trevelyan

Week -2

Unit-3: A View of Post Independence Debates

Unit-4: Setting Down of English as Studies and Medium

Week -3

Unit-1: The Context of the Earliest Indian English Writings

Unit-2: Henry Louis Vivian Derozio and the Early Voice of Identity

Week -4

Unit-3: Michael Madhusudan Dutt and the Evolution of Modernity

Unit-4: Toru Dutt: Assertion of Indian Life

Week -5

Unit-1: The Contexts of Bankim

Unit-2: Themes in Rajmohan’s Wife-I

Week -6

Unit-3: Themes in Rajmohan’s Wife-II

Unit-4: Marriage and Transgression in Bankim’s other Novels

Week -7

Unit-1: Evolution of English

Unit-2: Nativisation of English in Post-Independent India: Functions of English

Unit-3: Nativisation of English Discourse: Syntax, Morphology, Phonology

Week -8

Unit-4: Intelligibility of Indian English Globally

Unit-5: Debate Over Native and Non-Native English

Unit-6: Space of English in Multilingual India

Week -9

Unit-1: Problems of Teaching and Learning English Literature

Unit-2: The March of TELI

Unit-3: Role and Function of TELI in the Contemporary Context

Week -10

Unit-4: English Teaching in India

Unit-5: The Lie of the Land: English in India

Unit-6: Publishing in India and English Studies

Week -11

Unit-1: Questioning the Canon, Ideology and Assumptions of the Canon

Unit-2: The Rise of English and Issues Concerning the ‘Canon’

Unit-3: Possibilities of New Agreements

Week -12

Unit-4: Exploding English: Criticism, Theory and Culture

Unit-5: The Crisis in English Studies

Unit-6: Base, Text and Context: On The Triumph of Theory, The Resistance to Reading and the Question of Material Base

Week -13

Unit-1: Canon Making in the Era of Gandhi, Nehru, Socialism

Unit-2: Tagore, Prem Chand, Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao

Week -14

Unit-3: Feminism: Indian English Writers

Unit-4: The Dalit Canon

Week -15

Unit-1: Orientation and After

Unit-2: Literature and Nationalism

Unit-3: Decolonising the Mind

Week -16

Unit-4: Civilisational Conflicts in Literature

Unit-5: Resisting Colonisation and Re-Colonisation