Dr.M.Mazumdar

Abin Chakraborty is Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Chandernagore College, West Bengal. He edits the international peer-reviewed journal, Postcolonial Interventions. This volume provides an overview of popular culture and examines in particular how it represents, influences and even reinvents Indian society. Each chapter outlines key theoretical insights from various fields of study—such as Marxism, gender, sexuality, postcolonialism, postmodernism—and demonstrates how they may be used to understand the ever-expanding domain of popular culture. Examples from global culture as well as contemporary India have been used to further enrich this survey. Popular Culture has thus been prepared to enable Indian students and scholars to comprehensively analyse diverse forms and representations of popular culture from varying theoretical perspectives. Contents: Introduction.1. Structuralist approaches to popular culture. 2. Marxist theories of popular culture. 3. Gender, sexuali...

Agatha Christie, born in 1890 in Torquay, England, became one of the most prolific and beloved mystery writers of all time. She began writing during World War I and went on to pen over 100 novels, plays and short story collections featuring iconic detectives like Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a mystery novel by the British writer Agatha Christie, her third to feature Belgian Hercule Poirot as the lead detective. The novel was published in the UK in June 1926 by William Collins, Sons, having previously been serialised as Who Killed Ackroyd?  The novel was well received from its first publication, and has been called Christie's masterpiece. In 2013, the British Crime Writers' Association voted it the best crime novel ever. It is one of Christie's best-known and most controversial novels, its innovative twist ending having a significant impact on the genre. Howard Haycraft included it in his list of the most influential crime novels ever writte...

The Charge of the Light Brigade" is an 1854 narrative poem by the Victorian poet, Alfred, Lord Tennyson about the cavalry charge of the same name at the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War. He wrote the original version on 2 December 1854, and it was published on 9 December 1854 in The Examiner. He was the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom at the time. The poem was subsequently revised and expanded for inclusion in Maud and Other Poems (1855). The 600 troops of the brigade followed ambiguous orders to charge a heavily defended position though they knew they had little chance of survival. In this battle, a British cavalry unit—the “Light Brigade”—was commanded to charge against a Russian artillery unit. The order was almost suicidal, and the brigade was decimated in the charge. “The Charge of the Light Brigade” celebrates the self-sacrifice and heroism of the cavalrymen, suggesting that bravery consists of doing one's duty even when it leads to almost certain death. Th...

Ben Jonson (1572- 1637, born in London) was an English Stuart dramatist, lyric poet, and literary critic. He is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist, after William Shakespeare  and during the reign of James I . Among his major plays are the comedies Every Man in His Humour (1598), Volpone (1605), Epicoene; or, The Silent Woman (1609), The Alchemist (1610), and Bartholomew Fair (1614). Volpone, the Italian for "sly fox" is a comedy play, drawing on elements of city comedy and beast fable. A merciless satire of greed and lust, it remains Jonson's most-performed play, and it is ranked among the finest Jacobean-era comedies. The drama takes place in seventeenth-century Venice, over the course of one day. Volpone (The Fox) is without heirs, is a Venetian gentleman who pretends to be on his deathbed after a long illness in order to dupe Voltore (The Vulture), Corbaccio (The Raven) and Corvino (The Crow), three men who aspire to inherit his fo...

According to Wikipedia: “Aristotle first explored the idea of the concept in its relation to the principles of theater; the audience ignores the unreality of fiction in order to experience catharsis.” And later: “The poet and aesthetic philosophe S. T. Coleridge introduced the term suspension of disbelief in 1817 and suggested that if a writer could infuse a human interest and a semblance of truth into a fantastic tale, the reader would suspend judgement concerning the implausibility of the narrative. Besides being a supreme poet in his own right, Coleridge is also well-known for ushering in the Romantic age of poetry in England. Along with his friend William Wordsworth, Coleridge wrote and published Lyrical Ballads, a work that not only contained many of the two poets' poetic works, but also included essays on the nature and craft of poetry. When creating or reading poetry, Coleridge called for "That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poeti...

Many of the stories in this collection have their genesis in the turbulent years of bloodshed and tears that make up the history of the Nagas from the early fifties of the last century, and their demand for independence from the Indian state" [They] try to capture the ambience of the traditional Naga way of life... independence from the Indian state. The poetry of the Northeast is a symphony of folklore, myths, and other elements. Because it bears the cultural history of numerous tribes, Northeast poetry is rich in content. "Collecting and printing one's own community's oral and written literature became part of the nationalist mission of identity assertion." Nagaland is one such land that uses literature to try to resurrect its cultural identity and formation. The old storytelling tradition, which is common to all indigenous peoples' cultures, has been artistically incorporated with modern literary forms to give the literature of this region a distinct ident...

Internal Examination, 2026 Subject - DSM 401 (English) Full Marks - 20 1. Attempt any 5 questions from the following list- 5×2= 10 a) What are the names of the schools attended by Swami in the novel Swami and Friends? b) Who are the friends of Swaminathan? c) Who are the twins in the play "Tara" by Mahesh Datttani? d) Why was Swami expelled from Albert Mission School? e) What are the key themes of the poem The Night of the Scorpion? f) What does MCC stands for ? Who is the captain of MCC in Swami and Friends? 2. Attempt any one question from the following list- 10  a) Write a detailed note Swami and his friends in the novel Swami and Friends? b) Write a critical appreciation of the poem The Night of the Scorpion?  c) Discuss the central ideas of Kamala Das' poem My Grandmother's House? d) Discuss the theme of memory and forgetting in Judith Wright's Bora Ring.

Q. How does the poet describe the disappearance of Aboriginal culture in the first stanza? Answer: In the first stanza, Wright describes Aboriginal culture as something buried and silenced. The "song is gone" and the "dance is secret with the dancers in the earth," suggesting both death and concealment. Rituals are called "useless," emphasising that they no longer function in contemporary society. The "tribal story" is said to be "lost in an alien tale," indicating that colonial narratives have replaced Indigenous traditions. The language is simple but powerful, conveying finality and sorrow. The stanza establishes the theme of cultural extinction and prepares the reader for deeper moral reflection. Q. What role do the apple-gums play in the second stanza? Answer: The apple-gums are personified as if they "posture and mime a past corroboree." Through this personification, nature appears to imitate the ceremonial dances once pe...

The play Macbeth begins with the brief appearance of a trio of witches and then moves to a military camp, where the Scottish King Duncan hears the news that his generals, Macbeth and Banquo, have defeated two separate invading armies—one from Ireland, led by the rebel Macdonwald, and one from Norway. Following their pitched battle with these enemy forces, Macbeth and Banquo encounter the witches as they cross a moor. The witches prophesy that Macbeth will be made thane (a rank of Scottish nobility) of Cawdor and eventually King of Scotland. They also prophesy that Macbeth’s companion, Banquo, will beget a line of Scottish kings, although Banquo will never be king himself. Act I On a bleak Scottish moorland, Macbeth and Banquo, two of King Duncan's generals, discover three strange women (witches). The witches prophesy that Macbeth will be promoted twice: to Thane of Cawdor (a rank of the aristocracy bestowed by grateful kings) and King of Scotland. Banquo's descendants will be k...