Assignment: Research Methodology

   Types of Research Methodology

Name - Jignesh  K. Panchasara

          Paper 209:  Research Methodology

Roll No- 8

             Enrollment no-3069206420200013

Email id-jigneshpanchasara5758@gmail.com

             Batch- MA 2020-2022

Submitted to - S.B Gardi Department of              English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji  

                                 Bhavnagar University.  

What is a Research paper?

what image comes into mind as we hear the words ‘Research Paper’: working with stacks of articles and books; hunting the ‘treasure’ of others’ thoughts; preparing research report based on primary or secondary data? Whatever image we create, it’s a sure bet that we’re envisioning sources of information—articles, books, people, and artworks. Yet a research paper is more than the sum of sources, more than a collection of different pieces of information about a topic, and more than a review of the literature in a field. A research paper analyzes a perspective or argues a point. Regardless of the type of research paper, the researcher is writing, the researcher should present his own thinking backed up by others’ ideas and information. A research paper involves surveying a field of knowledge to find the best possible information in that field and that survey can be orderly and focused.

What is the definition of a research methodology?

Precisely, the definition of research methodology is the process or the way you intend to execute your entire research. A research methodology inscribes all the aspects where you plan to tackle different steps like collection procedures, data & statistical analysis, participant examinations & observations, etc.

You can assume your research methodology as being a mathematical equation or a formula. The first part of the equation shows how you intend to execute your research into actual practice. While the other part focuses on why your chosen way of execution is the best approach. Therefore, you should wield your research methodology as the most coherent and structured weapon to counter your research problems.

Simply and short, a research methodology provides a description of the process you will undertake to convert your idea into a study. Additionally, the outcomes of your undertaken process must provide valid and reliable results resonant with the aims and objectives of your research. This thumb rule holds complete validity no matter whether your paper has inclinations for qualitative or quantitative usage.

What is the need for a research methodology?

While deciding on your approach towards your research, the reason or factors you weighed in, need to be validated and explained. A research methodology helps you in doing exactly that. Moreover, a research methodology lets you build your argument to validate your research work performed through various collection procedures, analytical methods, and other essential points.

Just imagine it as a strategy documented to provide an overview of what you intend to do.

While undertaking any research writing or performing the research itself, you may get drifted in not something of much importance. In such a case, a research methodology helps you to get back to your outlined work methodology.

A research methodology helps in keeping you accountable for your work. Additionally, it can help you evaluate whether your work is in sync with your original aims and objectives or not. Besides, a research methodology enables you to navigate your research process smoothly and swiftly while providing effective planning to achieve your desired results.

What is the basic structure of a research methodology?

With all being stated, how exactly are you supposed to draft down your standard approach to a research methodology?

Usually, you must ensure to include the following stated aspects while deciding over the basic structure of your research methodology:

1. Your Research Procedure

Whether you are intending to proceed with quantitative or qualitative or a composite of both the approaches, you need to state that explicitly. The option among quantitative, qualitative, or the composite of two depends on your research’s aim, objectives, and scope.

2. Provide the Rationality Behind your Chosen Approach

You will be required to explain with rationality and, based on logic, the reason behind choosing either of the aforementioned research methodologies. Additionally, you have to build strong arguments supporting your approach method showing your chosen method is the best way to achieve the desired outcome.

3. Explain Your Mechanism

The mechanism is the details that encompass the methods or instruments you will use to develop your research methodology. It usually refers to your collection methods. You can use interviews, surveys, physical questionnaires, etc., of the many available mechanisms that can be leveraged as research methodology instruments. Moreover, you need to put logical reasoning behind choosing a particular instrument.

4. Significance of Outcomes

Once you are done playing with tools or the instruments, the results will be out. However, you must state how you will utilize the obtained results in interpreting the desired outcomes in pair with the aims and objectives of your research question.

5. Reader’s Advice

Anything that you feel must be explained towards spreading more awareness among the readers must be explained and described in detail. You should not just specify your research methodology on the assumption that a reader must be aware of the topic.  All the information, from the background information to anything that sounds relevant towards explaining and simplifying facts for better, must be included. If you are doing your research in something not so traditional manner, you must provide the reasoning, logical explanation, and advantages of that particular methodology.

6. Explain Your Sample Space

How you are going to distinguish between relevant and non-relevant while executing must be explained. How you figured out how to select those exact numbers to back your research methodology, i.e. the sample spacing of instruments must be discussed thoroughly.

For example, if you are going to conduct a survey or say interviews only, then by what procedure will you select the interviewees (or sample size in case of surveys), and how exactly will the interview or survey be conducted?

7. Challenges and Limitations

Often presumed as not so necessary, but this part carries importance in itself. You must specify the challenges and the limitations that your chosen way of approach possesses in itself.

Why is Research Methodology Important?

You must have observed that all research papers, dissertations, or thesis carry a chapter entirely dedicated to the research methodology. This is often referred to as research methodology sections. A section on research methodology will help maintain your credibility as a better interpreter of results rather than a manipulator.

A good research methodology always explains the procedure, aim, and scope of the research question. This leads to a well-organized rationality-based approach, while the paper lacking it is often observed as a messy or disorganized approach.

You should pay special attention to justifying and validating your chosen way of approach towards the research methodology. This becomes extremely important in case you select a non-conventional or some distinct method of executing your research.

Curating and crafting a robust research methodology can help you in tackling many scenarios like:

1. Just imagine some years later, somebody tries to replicate or work further on your research.
2. In case a contradiction or conflict of facts arises at some later point, you can always refer to your work. This keeps you secured enough in dealing with such contradictions as you stay prepared to explain the why and how aspects of your chosen approach method.
3. A research methodology is like a tactical approach to getting your research completed in time. You must ensure that you are using the right approach while drafting your research methodology, and it can help you achieve your desired outcomes.  Additionally, it provides a better explanation and understanding of the research question itself.
4. Building a research methodology makes you well versed in documenting the results so that the final outcome of the research stays as you intended it to be while starting.

Types of Research Methodology

A research methodology exists in various forms.

Depending upon their approach, whether centered around words, numbers, or both, methodologies are distinguished as Qualitative, Quantitative, or an amalgamation of both.

1. Qualitative Research Methodology

When the research methodology primarily focuses on the words and textual data, then such kind of methodology is generally referred to as qualitative research methodology. This type is usually preferred among researchers when the aim and scope of the research are mainly theoretical and explanatory.

The instruments used are observations, interviews, and sample groups. You can use this methodology if you are trying to study human behavior or response in some situations. Generally, qualitative research methodology is widely used in sociology, psychology, and other related domains.

2. Quantitative Research Methodology

If your research question is majorly centered on the data, figures, and stats, then analyzing all these numerical data is often referred to as Quantitative research methodology. You can use quantitative research methodology if your research requires you to validate or justify the obtained results.

Surveys, tests, experiments, and evaluations of current databases can be advantageously used as instruments while undertaking the quantitative research methodology approach. If your research involves testing some hypothesis, then you must use quantitative research methodology.

3. Amalgam Methodology (Combination of Qualitative & Quantitative Research Methodology)

As the name suggests, you would’ve figured out by now that the amalgam methodology uses both qualitative and quantitative approaches. This methodology is used when a part of research requires you to verify the facts and figures whereas, the other part demands you to discover the theoretical and explanatory nature of the research question.

The instruments for the amalgam methodology require you to conduct interviews, surveys, including tests and experiments. The outcome of this methodology can be insightful and valuable as it provides precise test results in line with theoretical explanations and reasoning.

The amalgam method, i.e., the combination of qualitative and quantitative research methodology hence makes your work both factual and rational at the same time.

Reference

Bhakar, Sher Singh. "Your Step-By-Step Guide To Writing A Good Research Methodology". Typeset Resources, 2022, https://typeset.io/resources/your-step-by-step-guide-to-writing-good-research-methodology/.

"Empire (Hardt And Negri Book) - Wikipedia". En.Wikipedia.Org, 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_(Hardt_and_Negri_book).

https://typeset.io/resources/your-step-by-step-guide-to-writing-good-research-methodology/

                                               Thanks

Assignment: Contemporary Literature in English

‘The Only Story’ – A Postmodern Novel

 Name - Jignesh  K. Panchasara

          Paper 207:  Contemporary Literature in English

Roll No- 8

             Enrollment no-3069206420200013

Email id-jigneshpanchasara5758@gmail.com

             Batch- MA 2020-2022

Submitted to - S.B Gardi Department of              English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji  

                                 Bhavnagar University.  

The Only Story is a novel by Julian Barnes. It is his thirteenth novel and was published on 1 February 2018.

In the previous chapter Julian Barnes’ twelfth novel The Noise of Time (2016) was analyzed

and it has been shown that the book does indeed contain postmodern elements such as irony

and epistemological issues. In this chapter, Barnes’ latest novel The Only Story (2018) will be analyzed, considering the postmodern elements of the engagement with history, irony, refutation of truth claims, paranoia, and the reflection on epistemological questions.

The Only Story begins in 1960s English suburbia and tracks the story of Paul Roberts.

Paul is a nineteen-year-old, who spends his university summer break at his parents’ house.

On the initiative of his parents, he joins the local tennis club where he meets and falls in love with the forty-eight-year-old married Susan Macleod. Soon they begin a secret romantic relationship. After some years they buy a house in London, move there and live together for ten years. But soon, the great love between the two begins to crumble. Susan becomes an alcoholic and Paul learns that love can be tough. The story is narrated by Paul, adopting three different perspectives, as a young lad, then as middle-aged, and finally as an elderly.

The book has three chapters, simply named ‘One, Two, Three’. In each of these chapters

the point of view of narration changes. In the first chapter, there is a first-person narrator

(Paul); in the second chapter the first-person narration gradually passes over to second-person narration: “You decide that, since you are a student….”81 The third and final chapter is narrated in third-person, except for the last few paragraphs when the narration switches back to first-person. As was argued in chapter two, third-person narration creates a distance from what is narrated. This contrasts with the first-person narration, which projects the reader in Paul’s consciousness. The second-person narration is “extremely rare.”82 A well-known example is If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller, a postmodern novel by Italo Calvino. The choice of narrative point of view becomes especially meaningful if one considers the consideration of events the events consideration of the events narrated in the chapters. In chapter one Paul only narrates

the nice memories he has of his relationship with Susan; at the end of the chapter he even

says, “and this is how I would remember it all it could. But I can’t.”83 Paul foreshadows

some important but ugly memories. These are only gradually revealed to the reader in chapters two and three and each chapter adds a new perspective and details to the story. The

pleasurable memories are told in first-person, but the unpleasant ones are told with more

distance, creating the sense that Paul tries to prevent these memories get too close to him.

Paul, as the narrator of the story, is a typical Barnesian narrator, a “sad English person,

preferably male.”84 He is also a typical “Barnesian character, [who] tends to wonder about

life instead of living it and to meditate on … issues … instead of taking action. Often, he fails to be in control of his life and realizes only in hindsight, when it is probably too late, what has become of him.”85 This also applies to the narrator of The Noise of Time, Dmitri, and has an impact on how the story is told.

“Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the

less?”86 This question opens the novel and also introduces its main theme, love. However,

this is not a real question. We cannot choose how much we love, if we can then it is not

love.87 This is only one of the many aspects of love that the novel dwells upon. In another

instance, it contemplates first love and how it influences one’s life:

First love fixes a life forever: this much I have discovered over the years. It may not

outrank subsequent loves, but they will always be affected by its existence. It may serve as

model or a counterexample. It may overshadow subsequent loves; on the other hand, it can make them easier, better. Though sometimes, first love cauterizes the heart, and all any searcher will find thereafter is scar tissue.

The latter is the case with Paul, even though the novel leaves it to the reader to come to this

conclusion. This subtlety was also illustrated in The Noise of Time, which is indicative that

this indeed is something typical of Barnes’ novels. When Paul finally leaves Susan and hands her to Susan’s daughters he works in several countries. He builds a social circle and has new relationships, but he usually moves on after a few years.89 Paul is metaphorically scarred for life as he observes that this lifestyle “was all he felt able to sustain.”90 He also debates whether this coping strategy, “his policy of moving on – from place to place, woman to woman – was courageous in admitting his own limitations, or cowardly accepting them.”

Paul records people’s statements about love in a notebook. One of the entries in the famous quote from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem “In Memoriam”: “’ It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.’”93 Over the years he reads his notebook a couple of times and crosses out quotes he does not believe to be true (anymore). One entry,

however, ‘survives’ several reviews: “’ In love, everything is both true and false; it’s the one

subject on which it’s impossible to say anything absurd.’”94 This quote was written by the French writer Sébastien Nicolas de Chamfort. Paul extends and interprets the quote on his own; his relationship with Susan, “an improbable attachment,”95 is frowned upon by society, nonetheless this “love itself is never absurd, neither are any of its participants.”96 There is also a quote from the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev’s play A Month in the Country: “’ In my opinion, every love, happy or unhappy, is a real disaster once you give yourself over to it entirely.’”97 This is not the first time that Barnes uses this quote; it is also featured in a short story of Barnes in the short story collection The Lemon Table (2004). Thus, we can see a variety of intertextual references, however, they are not marked as such in the text. The assigning of the quotes to their respective authors is part of the research of this paper. In postmodern theory, intertextuality plays a role in expressing the idea that “reproduction takes over from authentic production.”98 Nothing is original, and in the case of love, everyone has already said something about it. So far, the novel presented a variety of definitions regarding love. At the end of the novel, Paul concludes that “perhaps he had always been wasting his time. Perhaps love could never be captured in a definition; it could only ever be captured in a story.”

 This is also an instance of self-reflexivity because the novel tries exactly to do this, capturing love by telling the story of Paul Roberts. As love seems undefinable, it seems probable to draw a parallel between Postmodernism and love. As soon as one tries to define either of the terms, it will slip through one’s fingers. The definitions of love are not exactly falsified but the novel subtly undermines the truth claims of these definitions, as love cannot be pinned down in a definition but can only be grasped in an ‘only story’.

In Barnes’ Man Booker Prize-winning The Sense of an Ending (2011), memory is the main

theme. In The Only Story, Barnes returns to this theme. Tony Webster, the protagonist of The Sense of an Ending also struggles with the idea of a malleable memory but Paul delves

deeper into the issue by, among others, openly admitting the deficiencies of his memory. He

openly questions whether retelling memories or in this case the retelling of his story, “bring

you closer to the truth of what happened, or move you further away?”100 There are numerous instances where Paul says that he is not entirely sure about what he remembers.101 An example of this is when he remembers the time when he and Susan are visited by a man in their house in London: “He was a man of fiftyish, I suppose. In my memory, I have given him or he has acquired over the years – a trench coat, and perhaps a broad-brimmed hat, underneath which he wore a suit and tie.”102 In this quote it becomes visible that Paul is very aware of the fact that memories change over time. This makes Paul a more reliable character but as a reader, one should be careful not to believe everything. Paul also comments on the nature of memory. He says that “memory sorts and sifts according to the demands made on it by the rememberer … Memory prioritizes whatever is most useful to help keep the bearer of those memories going. So there would be self-interest in bringing happier memories to the surface first.”103 The last sentence also explains why in chapter one only the happy memories of Paul’s relationship with Susan are retold. But there are also fewer direct allusions to the malleable nature of memory. Throughout the chapters Paul’s memory of Gordon Macleod, the husband of Susan, changes. In chapter one Paul does not really care for Gordon; he feels that Gordon has nothing to do with the relationship between him and Susan.104 In part two, when the reader learns about the abuse of Macleod both towards Paul and Susan that Paulspreviously left out, he develops a more hateful attitude towards him but as he ages, this feeling fades; it becomes irrelevant.105 This process is so subtle that it is questionable that Paul is aware of it as the novel only implies this change very subtly.

Thus, Paul recognizes the bias and unreliability of memory. The elderly Paul contemplates

whether memory is directed towards optimism or pessimism.106 He argues for both

sides but does not come to a final conclusion. On the one hand, he argues that an optimistic

memory “remembers your past in cheerful terms because this validated your existence.”107 On the other, a pessimistic memory that makes all appear “blacker and bleaker than it actually was, then this might make life easier to leave behind.”108 It is typical of Barnes as well as Postmodernism that the question remains unanswered as they refute truth claims. History is addressed in the novel by the concept of ‘pre-history’. However, it is never really explained what this exactly means. The term first appears when Susan tells Paul of her generation, which actively experienced the Second World War. Paul describes this as her prehistory.109 Paul is still quite young at the time and this might explain why he calls it her prehistory. Young adolescents often do not want to realize and understand that the older generation also once was young and had their problems. Pre-history comes with a certain negative connotation if a young person uses it to describe an older generation. However, Paul does acknowledge that “pre-history is central to all relationships.”110 It is quite ironic here

that Paul believes in this but does not try to act upon it. He fails to use this knowledge to

understand Susan’s alcoholism. How successful that would have been, however, is another matter. As the reader knows by chapter three, the relationship did not go too well. Significantly, Paul never really muses about who is to which degree to blame. He simply thinks that “if you wanted to attribute fault, you were straight away into pre-history, which now, in two of their three cases, had become inaccessible.”111 He settles for the easy way; he simply cannot figure it out anymore since the two people involved are dead. Barnes’ novels deal with deeply human issues of life. In the context of the relationship, the novel alludes to shame. Paul and Susan both feel ashamed for various reasons. Susan is ashamed of her unhappy and abusive marriage with Gordon and that she cannot admit this in public and divorce him.112 Susan’s shame expands when she becomes an alcoholic. Paul manages to get her to see a consultant psychiatrist but this attempt to get help fails. In this situation, Paul is ashamed of her being addicted to alcohol.113 When he is older, Paul realizes “that love, by some ruthless, almost chemical process, could resolve into pity and anger. …And anger in a man caused him disgust.”114 This adds a new aspect to Paul’s shame; he is ashamed of his self-disgust. Paul never really specifies what their shame is respectively. It seems as if it is something that the elderly Paul does not want to dwell upon too much. This hints at the unreliability of Paul, even though he endeavors to be honest about his shortcomings. Barnes’ novels are deeply engaged with the “subjectivity and impenetrable nature of knowledge and the illusory nature of the truth.”115 This also holds true for the novel at hand, The Only Story. As it was argued in the preceding chapters, the engagement with epistemological questions is one of many elements of Postmodernism. It is important to stress at this point that Postmodernism is very complex and it is impossible to measure it. However, it is possible to identify elements that are associated with Postmodernism. In the present novel, reflections on life are omnipresent. The main focus lies on love and themes that are associated with love. History and the nature of memory are important themes of the novel as well.

  The postmodern element of the refutation of truth claims is limited to the theme of love. The novel does this in a very subtle manner. The general subtlety whereby the novel expresses ideas is typical of Barnes and Postmodernism. In the analysis, some postmodern elements that were discussed in chapter one, such as irony and paranoia, were not found. However, this does not curtail the degree to which this novel might be labeled as postmodern, as it is impossible to measure Postmodernism. This chapter also briefly introduced another postmodern element that was not included before, intertextuality. Intertextuality can be hard to recognize if one is not familiar with the text that is referred to; which is why it has not been explained. In the conclusion of this paper, it will be discussed whether the considered postmodern elements in The Noise of Time and The Only Story are a form of Barnes’ adjusted form of Postmodernism. This idea will be further developed in the following conclusion of this paper, along with the synthesis of the research results.

Reference 

Theses.Ubn.Ru.Nl, 2022, https://theses.ubn.ru.nl/bitstream/handle/123456789/8301/R%C3%B6ttgers,_A._1.pdf?sequence=1.

Valarmathy, r.K. Xisdxjxsu.Asia, 2022, https://www.xisdxjxsu.asia/V17I11-37.pdf.

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Assignment: The African Literature

   SYNOPSIS OF NGUGI WATHINNGO’S PETALS OF BLOOD

 Name - Jignesh  K. Panchasara

           Paper 206:  The African Literature  

Roll No- 8

             Enrollment no-3069206420200013

Email id-jigneshpanchasara5758@gmail.com

             Batch- MA 2020-2022

Submitted to - S.B Gardi Department of              English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji  

                                 Bhavnagar University.  

                       Introduction 

Ngũgĩ was Thiong'o is a Kenyan writer and academic who writes primarily in Gikuyu and who formerly wrote in English. His work includes novels, plays, short stories, and essays, ranging from literary and social criticism to children's literature. He is the founder and editor of the Gikuyu-language journal Mũtĩiri.

Petals of Blood is a novel written by Ngũgĩ was Thiong'o and first published in 1977. Set in Kenya just after independence, the story follows four characters – Munira, Abdulla, Wanja, and Karega – whose lives are intertwined due to the Mau Mau rebellion.

Background of the Author

            Ngugi WaThinngo was born on 5th January, in 1938 kaminihu, near limuru in Kiambu district, of Kikuyu district, and baptized James Ngugi. His family was caught up in the Maumau war, his half-brother Mwangi was involved in the Kenya land and freedom army, and his mother was tortured at the kaminithu home guard post.

            He received a B. An in English from Makerere university college in Kampala, Uganda in 1963, during his education, a play of his, BLACK HERMIT was produced in Kampala, in 1962. Ngugi published his first novel, weep not a child in 1964 which he wrote while attending the University of Leeds in England; it was the first novel to be published by a writer from east Africa.

            His second novel, The River Between (1965), has as its background the Mau Mau rebellion and is described as an unhappy romance between Christians and non-Christians. His novel, again of Wheat(1967) marked his embrace of Feminist Marxism. He subsequently renounced English, Christianity, and the name James Ngugi Ngugiwathiongo, and began to write in his native Gikuyu and Swahili.

 Style of the Novel

            ‘Petals of Blood’ relies heavily on flashbacks, using the points of view of the four major characters is questioned by the police, the novel takes on certain characteristics of the detective novel, with a police offer trying to ascertain details of their pasts to find the murderer of Chui, Kimeria, and Margo. The narrative voices shift between Munira and the other characters describing the events of their lives and an omniscient narrator. There is also a suggestion of a communal narrative voice as Ngugi draws on the mythic past of Kenya to place the novel in a wider context than simply the colonial.

ANALYSIS OF THE SUBJECT MATTER IN NGUGI WATHIONGO’S.

Petals of Blood

            The title Petals of Blood is derived from a line of Derek Walcott’s poem ‘the swamp’ the poem suggests that there is a deadly power within nature that must be respected despite attempts to suggest by humans that they like harmoniously with it. Originally called Ballad of a Barmaid, it is unclear why Ngugi changed the title before release. The phrase “Petals of Blood” appears several times throughout the novel, with varying associations and meanings. Initially, “petals of blood” is first used by a pupil in Munira's class to describe a flower-Munira quickly chastises the boy, saying that there is no color called blood. Later, the phrase is used to describe flames, as well as relating to virginity during one of Munira's sexual fantasies.

            Petals of Blood is a novel written by NgugiWaThiongoand first published in 1977set in Kenya just after independence, the story follows four characters: Munira, Abdulla, Wanjaand Karegawhose lives are intertwined due to the Muamau rebellion. To escape city life, each retreats to the small pastoral village of Illmorog. As the novel progresses, the characters deal with the repercussions of the Muamau rebellion as well as with a new, rapidly westernizing Kenya. The novel largely deals with the skepticism of change after Kenya’s liberation from the British Empire, questioning to what extent free Kenya merely emulates, and subsequently perpetuates, the oppressions found during its time as a colony, other themes include the challenging of capitalist politics and the effect westernization education, schools, and the Mau Mau rebellion are also used to unite the characters who share a common history with one another.

            ‘Petals of blood’ was Ngugi’s first Novel written whilst not in full-time education, instead of writing over five years. Initially began whilst teaching at northwestern University in 1970 the writer continued to work on the novel after his return to Kenya, finally finishing the novel in Yalta as a guest of the soviet writers’ union, Ngugi was inspired to. Write the novel as a way of synthesizing the nation of a post-colonial nation, and a willingness to portray the agent of social change present in Kenya’s change from British East Africa. ‘Petals of Blood’ was the last of Ngugi’s Novels to be written first in English on 30 December 1977, shortly after the release of his play “will marry when I want”, Ngugi was taken into custody by law enforcement officials and held without charges for questioning. According to Patrick Williams, Ngugi was often criticized by detractors for “dragging political tone to his novel, including Petals of Blood, Ngugi had avoided government interferences until deciding to write in his native Gikuyu language. After the release of petals of blood, Ngugi wrote and began work on a Gikuyu language play called Ngachiika Ndeenda (I will marry when I want). He was then arrested and detained on both December 1977, for crimes relating to his “literary political” background. After this period, all of his novels would be written first in Gikuyu and later translated into English, a move understood to be a conscious decision to focus more strongly on the peasant workers of Kenya as inspiration for his novels.

            The book begins by describing the four main characters Munira, Karega, Wanja, and English on Abdulla just after the revelation that three prominent Kenyans, two businessmen, and one educator. Have been killed in a fire, the next chapter moves back in the timeline of the novel, focusing on Munira’s move toi1Imorog, to begin work as a teacher he is initially met with sustain poor classroom attendance as the villagers think he will give up on the village soon, in much the same way previous teachers have done. However, Munira stays and, with the friendship of Abdullah, another immigrant to i11morog who owns a small shop and bar carves out life as a teacher. Soon Wanja arrives, the granddaughter of the town’s oldest and most revered lady. She is an attractive, experienced barmaid who Munira begins to fall in love with, despite the fact he is already married. She too is escaping the city and begins to work for Abdullah, quickly reshaping his shop, and expanding its bai, daregasiriana. After a brief relationship with Munira, Tanja once again grows his illusion and leaves illmorog. The year of her departure is not good for the village as the weather is harsh and no rain comes, making for a poor harvest. In an attempt to enact change, the villagers are inspired by Karega to journey to Nairobi to talk for their members of parliament.

            The journey is very arduous and Joseph, a boy Abdullah had taken in his brother and who had worked in his shop, becomes ill. When they arrived in Nairobi, the villagers seek help from every quarter. They are turned away by a reverend who thinks they are mere beggars despite their pleas for help for the sick child. Trying at another house, some of the villagers are rounded up and forced into the building where they are questioned by Kimeria, a ruthless businessman who reveals that he and their Mp are in league with one another. He blackmails Wanja and subsequently rapes her upon arriving in Nairobi and speaking to their Mp, the villagers realize that nothing will change, as he is little more than a demagogue however they do meet a lawyer who wishes to help them and others in the same predicament and through a court case highlights illmorog plights this draws attention from national press and donation and charities pour into illmorog.

            Finally, the rain comes, and the villagers celebrate with ancient rituals and dances. During this time, Karega starts a correspondence with the lawyers that he met in Nairobi, wishing to educate himself further to celebrate the rain’s coming, Nyakinyua brews a drink from the Sangeeta plant, which all of the villagers drink. Karega tells the story of the love between him and Murakami, the older sister of Munira. Mukami’s father looked down on Karega because of his brother’s involvement with the Mau Mau. Forced to separate, Mariama and Karega do not see each other again, and Mukami later commits suicide by jumping into a quarry. This is the first time Munira hears the story. Later, an unknown plane crashes in the village, the only victim is Abdulla’s donkey. Wanja notices that there are several large groups of people who come to survey the wreckage and suggest to Abdulla that they begin to sell the thang, eta drink in Abdulla’s bar. The drink attracts notoriety and many people come to the bar to sample it. Out of fury for Karega's connection to his family and jealousy of his relationship with Wanda, Munira seems to have Karega fired from his teaching post with the school. Karega then leaves illmorog. Development arrives in illmorog as the government begins to build the trans-Africa road through the village, which brings an increase in trade. Dara returns to illmorog telling of his slow spiral into alcoholism before finally securing work in a factory. After getting fired from the factory, he returns to Fillmore. The change in illmorog is rapid and the villagers change into the town of new illmorog. The farmers are told that they should fence off their land mortgage parts of it to ensure that they owed a finite area. They are offered loans that are linked to their harvest turn out to pay for this expense. Nyakinyua dies and the banks move to take her land, she opens up a successful brothel in the town and uses herself as one of the prostitutes. Munira goes to see to attempt to rekindle their romance but is met with only demand for money he pays, and the couples have sex. Karega goes to see Wanja who both still have strong feelings for each other, but after disagreeing about how to herself finally from the men who have exploited her during her life wanting to bring them to her brother with all of her prostitutes sent away so that she could present the downtrodden but noble Abdulla as her chosen partner. Meanwhile, Munira is watching the brothel, and seed Karega arrives and then leaves. In a religious favor, he pours petrol on the brothel, set it alight, and retreats to a hill to watch it burn. wanna escapes but is hospitalized due to smoke inhalation, the other man Wanja had invited died in the fire. Manira is sentenced to arson, later Karega learns that the corrupt local. Mp was gunned down in his car whilst waiting for his chauffeur in Nairobi.

  CHARACTERIZATION IN PETAL OF BLOOD

            MUNIRA, a house boy who goes to illmorog to teach in its dilapidated school. He falls in love with Tanja and is the arsonist the police seek. WANJA-Granddaughter of Nyakinya. An experience barmaid who flees her past in the city. She falls in love with Karega, although she is still coveted by Munira. She also sleeps with Abdulla because of her reverence for his actions in the Mau Mau rebellion. An Industrious barmaid, she helps Abdulla’s shop to become successful and also sells thang’ eta she later becomes a prostitute and runs her own brothel before being injured in Maunira’sarson attack.

            ABDULLA-A shopkeeper who lost his leg in the Mau Mau rebellion. His main assets in life are his shop and donkey as well as a boy Joseph who he had taken in and cared for as a brother. He is the only major character to have worked with the maumau during the rebellion.

            Karega-young man who works as a teaching assistant at Munira’sschool before becoming disillusioned and heading for the city. After the trip to Nairobi, he becomes enamored with socialism and starts to educate himself on its principles and on the law. However, he later becomes disillusioned with the effect of education and how apt it is in the liberation struggle. As a youth he dated Munira’ssister who subsequently committed suicide, this was unknown to Manirauntil Karegareveals it to him and to others having drunk thang’eta. NYAKINYUA-the village’s most revered woman, and the grandmother of Wanja. She performs all of the traditional ceremonies in the village like his predecessors. After her death, Wanjasells her business to save Nyakinyua’s land from the banks and also uses the proceeds to start a brothel. A chimera-ruthless businessman who is a part of the new Kenya elite. Has an interest in illmorogfor business purposes and had a previous relationship with their Wanjaas the villagers travel to Nairobi to meet with their politician, Kimeria holds Wanja hostage and rapes her.

Reference

 

"SYNOPSIS OF NGUGI WATHINNGO’S PETALS OF BLOOD". Harrilibrary, 2022, https://harrilibrary.blogspot.com/2019/03/synopsis-of-ngugi-wathinngos-petals-of.html.

"Theme And Analysis Of " Petals Of Blood" By Ngugi Wa Thiong'o". Cliffsenglish.Blogspot.Com, 2022, http://cliffsenglish.blogspot.com/2015/08/theme-and-analysis-of-petals-of-blood.html.

      

Unit 3: Translation Studies

6) GN Devy, “Translation Theory: An Indian Perspective”, In Another Tongue: Essays on Indian English Literature. 1993

1) Abstract

This article is about the role of translation in communicating literary movements across linguistic borders. According to J. Hillis Miller ‘Translation is the wandering existence of a text in a perpetual exile.’Chaucer, Dryden, and the Pope used the tool of translation to recover a sense of order. The tradition of Anglo-Irish literature branched out of translating Irish works into English.No critic has taken a well-defined position on the place of translations in literary history. Origins of literary movements and literary traditions inhabit various acts of translation. Translations are popularly perceived as unoriginal, not much thought has been devoted to the aesthetics of translation.

2) Key Arguments

• J.C. Catford presents a comprehensive statement of theoretical formulation about the linguistics of translation in A Linguistic Theory of Translation, in which he seeks to isolate various linguistic levels of translation. His basic premise is that since translation is a linguistic act any theory of translation must emerge from linguistics: ‘Translation is an operation performed on languages: a process of substituting a text in one language for a text in another; clearly, then, any theory of translation must draw upon a theory of language – a general linguistic theory’ (Catford, 1965, p. vii).

• During the nineteenth century, Europe had distributed various fields of humanistic knowledge into a threefold hierarchy:

•  comparative studies for Europe, 

• Orientalism for the Orient, and

• anthropology for the rest of the world

• After the ‘discovery’ of Sanskrit by Sir William Jones, historical linguistics in Europe depended heavily on Orientalism.

• And after Saussure and Lévi-Strauss, linguistics started treating language with an anthropological curiosity.

3) Analysis

• The Problems in Translation Study

• The translation is not a transposition of significance or signs. After the act of translation is over, the original work still remains in its original position. The translation is rather an attempted revitalization of the original in another verbal order and temporal space. Like literary texts that continue to belong to their original periods and styles and also exist through successive chronological periods, translation at once approximates the original and transcends it.

• problems of the relationship between origins and sequentiality

• the very foundation of modern Indian literature was laid through acts of translation, whether by Jayadeva, Hemcandra, Michael Madhusudan Dutta, H.N. Apte, or Bankim Chandra Chatterjee.

4) Conclusion

• The true test is the writer’s capacity to transform, to translate, to restate, to revitalize the original. And in that sense, Indian literary traditions are essentially traditions of translation.

• Comparative literature implies that between two related languages there are areas of significance that are shared, just as there may be areas of significance that can never be shared.

•  When the soul passes from one body to another, it does not lose any of its essential significance. Indian philosophies of the relationship between form and essence, structure and significance are guided by this metaphysics.

7) A.K. Ramanujan, “On Translating a Tamil Poem”, Collected Essays of A.K. Ramanujan, ed Vinay Dharwadkar. Oxford University Press, 1999

1) Abstract

• We know now that no translation can be literal,' or 'word for word. That is where the impossibility lies. The only possible translation is a 'free' one. What is every day in one language must be translated by what is every day in the 'target' language also, and what is eccentric must find equally eccentric equivalents. In this article, Ramanujan took various examples of Tamil poems that he translated into English and he described difficulties that he faced during translation.

• Comparison of Tamil and English Language

• While translating the Tamil poem Ainkurunuru 203, He begins with the sounds. He finds that the sound system of Tamil is very different from English. For instance, Old Tamil has six nasal consonants: a labial, a dental, and alveolar, a retroflex, a palatal, and a velar-m, n, n, ñ, n, n-three of which are not distinctive in English.

• How shall we translate a six-way system into a three-way English system (m, n, n)? Tamil has long and short vowels, but English (or most English dialects) have diphthongs and glides. Tamil has no initial consonant clusters, but English abounds in them: 'school, scratch, splash, strike', etc. English words may end in stops, as in 'cut, cup, tuck,' etc.; Tamil words do not.

2) Key Arguments

• Evans-Pritchard, the anthropologist, used to say: If you translate all the European arguments for atheism into Azande, they would come out as arguments for God in Azande. Such observations certainly disabuse us of the commonly-held notion of a literal translation.

• Woollcott suggests that English does not have left-branching possibilities, but they are a bit abnormal.

• Hopkins and Dylan Thomas used those possibilities stunningly, as we see in Thomas's 'A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London; both were Welshmen, and Welsh is a left-branching language.

3) Analysis

• The collocations and paradigms make for metonymies and metaphors, multiple contextual meanings clusters special to each language, quite untranslatable into another language like Tamil. Even when the elements of a system may be similar in two languages, like father, mother, brother, mother-in-law, etc., in kinship, the system of relations and the feelings traditionally encouraged each Ali culturally relative are all sensitive and therefore part of I culturally onts and novelists. the expressive repertoire of

• Ramanujan took two differs and s poems about love (What She Said) and war (A Young Warrior) and made the point that when we move from one to the other we are struck by the associations across them forming a web not only of the aka and Puram genres. But also of the five landscapes.; with all their contents signifying moods. And the themes and motifs of love and war.

• Love and war become metaphors for one another. In the poem "A Leaf In Love And War" we see entwines the two themes of love and war in an ironic juxtaposition. A wreath of noise is worn by warriors in war poems a cocci leaf skirt is given by a lover to

his woman in a love poem.

• Example God Krishna: both lovers and warriors Ramanujan take a closer look at the original of Kapilar's poem Ainkurunuru 203. And he points out that The word annoy (in spoken Tamil, ammo), literally 'mother', is a familiar term of address for any woman, here a 'girl friend'. So I have translated it as 'friend', to make clear that the poem is not addressed to a mother (as some other poems are) but to a girlfriend.

4) Conclusion

May succeed only in representing the poem, not in closely representing it. At such times one draws consolation from parables like the following. If the representation in another language is not close enough, but still succeeds in 'carrying the poem in some sense, we will have two poems instead of one.

The translation must not only represent,, but present, the original. One walks a tightrope between the To-language and the From-language, in a double loyalty. A translator is an artist on oath'.

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