Ashik Istiak

This paper attempts to explain the animal poems of Ted Hughes in the light of Deconstruction and Psychoanalysis. The paper first presents the physical description of the violent and sometimes exotic animals in many of his animal poems. The basic aim of the study is to provide enough logic to declare the vicious animals of Ted Hughes are more humans than animals. The theories: Deconstruction and Psychoanalysis will be applied to find out how the the cruelty, the vendetta and the ferociousness of the animals in Hughes' poems go beyond their animal identities. Overall, the article promises food for thought for the readers of Ted Hughes and the English literature learners.

The year 5000 B.C. saw the extinction of the village based culture in some parts of the world and then started the city based civilization. Egyptian civilization (5000-525 B.C.) set glorious landmarks into the areas of agriculture, business, architecture, art, culture, religion and science. Especially in temple building and other architectural contributions of the Egyptians made them unique. This glorious civilization of the Pharaohs was taken by the Persians in 525 B.C. Later Egyptians were ruled by the Romans, Greeks, Arabians and Turks. Even in the very modern period it was colonized by the English. In the middle of the 20th century Egypt got its freedom from the foreign powers finally.

As a race Hebrews had mixed characteristics. For the Hittite fusion, Hebrews had long and carved nose. They were not skilled enough in the matter of warfare, architecture or painting but their religion played unexpectedly a huge role throughout the history of religion in the whole world. There is a doubt in the etymology of their name. A popular saying is that from ‘Khabiru’ or ‘Habiru’ the name ‘Hebrew’ has been originated. Another saying is that from the opposite side of the Euphrates ‘Ever’ or ‘Eber’ the name Hebrew came. Most of the scholars agree that the Hebrew people have been originated from Arab.

The poem ‘An Apple Gathering’ by Christina Rossetti talks about a betrayed love or an unfulfillment of love.The condition of a betrayed girl and the harsh treatment on her by the society is vividly pictured in this poem. The poet symbolizes the action of losing chastity or virginity, by the action of plucking ‘pink blossoms’ of an apple tree. After losing her chastity and being betrayed, the speaker faces a dangling condition which is symbolized by her ‘dangling basket’. This condition is also contrasted showing the ‘heaped-up basket’ of the other girls.  When she sees other girls not betrayed in love happily singing, smiling, she laments over her ill fate. The use of symbolism to show all these, is really very authentic throughout the whole poem.

This paper attempts to explain the animal poems of Ted Hughes in the light of Deconstruction and Psychoanalysis. The paper first presents the physical description of the violent and sometimes exotic animals in many of his animal poems and then tries to explore the hermeneutics of them. The basic aim of the study is to provide enough logic to declare that the vicious animals of Ted Hughes are more humans than animals. The theories: Deconstruction and Psychoanalysis will be applied to find out how the cruelty, the vendetta and the ferociousness of the animals in Hughes' poems go beyond their animal identities. Overall, the article promises food for thought for the readers of Ted Hughes and the English literature learners.

In George Orwell's well-composed nonfictions through which he voices against the very imperial nature of the British Empire, there is a subtle tone of superior English race while describing Indians or people of the subcontinent. The tone of Orwell while giving the physical description of these people often poses questions towards the noble purposes of his writings. One common feature in his works is the author's contrasting feelings about the Orient and Orientals from the white men's perspective. To justify the arguments two of Orwell's Essays A Hanging and Shooting an Elephant have been chosen. The aim is to revise the two mentioned essays and their common interpretations and at the same time, to unmask the racist approaches hidden beneath the wrapping of kind words. To support the cause, Edward Said's concept of the Orient and the Occident expressed in his Orientalism is used as the theoretical ground. Said has explored the idea of an authoritative construction of Orientalism historically by the imperial powers such as French and British empires and in George Orwell's nonfictions, this 'authoritative construction' of Indians has been subtly presented. Thus, using Edward Said's theory as a counter-argument to George Orwell, the paper would make a postcolonial study of the two mentioned nonfictions.

Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is developed through a philosophical contrast between the traveler who is obsessed by the seductive beauty of the woods and the horse which seems to be practical as it understands the danger of giving a sudden pause in such a stark spatial situation. The traveler seems to have a romantic desire to be lost in nature and the horse is a realistic thinker. The success of the horse in making the traveler change his mind may be seen as the succession of realism from transcendentalism. The stopping of the traveler amidst ‘sublime’ nature resembles Emersonian consideration of transcendentalist nature, and the decision to leave the place of woods and snowfall by the end of the poem may be associated with both the denial of transcendentalism and the acceptance of realism. Acknowledging the transition of America from Puritanism to Transcendentalism, the paper places American realism expressed by Frost in the current poem as a synthesis of the two former philosophical genres. First of all, the paper explains the transition of America from Puritanism to transcendentalism and successive realism elaborating the contrast among the three philosophical genres. Then, the paper discovers an Emersonian urge in the traveler of Frost and explains how the urge has been denied. Finally, the realistic realization of the traveler is associated with the development of American Realism. Overall, the paper intends to show the poem as an example of the philosophical transition in America from Emerson to Frost. 
Keywords: Emerson, transcendentalism, realism, obsession, sublime, disillusionment

Dakota writer Elizabeth Cook-Lynn’s memoir In Defense of Loose Translations: An Indian Life in an Academic World is an excellent resource for those who are fairly new to Native/Indigenous studies (e.g., researchers coming from outside of the Americas and Europe) and want to understand the basic concerns of Indigenous scholarship. American historiography demonstrates “a process of collective memory erasure”1 that denies the presence of the Native nations. It is truly impossible to appreciate the scholarship on Indigenous nations and their histories of ongoing colonial oppressions, historical wrongdoings for centuries, without looking into the works of Cook-Lynn and conscientious Indigenous authors like her who have dedicated themselves to the defense of their respective Indigenous nations. In her memoir, Cook-Lynn vehemently criticizes colonial supremacy of American literary traditions that (mis)represent Indigenous history, politics, and cultures as forms of ethnic cleansing, denials, and refusals of Indigenous claims to lands and territories.

Roxane Gay’s Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body examines the external pressure on a fat woman and also criticizes the manner in which an obese body is socially objectified. Besides telling her own story of weight gain, she gravely identifies different problems of plus-size women in a thin obsessed body-intolerant society. Thus, she unmasks the patriarchal fixations in many social institutions and cultural practices which exploit the idea of thinness destroying the normal life of obese women. This paper’s basic interest is to discuss the problematic public life of these women who do not possess a culturally defined ‘normal’ body centering on selected facts that have contributed to Roxane Gay’s life. The paper elaborates on strange public reactions, ill-treatments in public spaces, and fat shaming in media which are distressful but regularly visible in the life of fat women. Presenting the notion of body positivity as an antithesis to thin obsession, the paper aims to conclude that only by creating a mentality to accept diverse body types, may the social and cultural challenges involved in an obese woman’s life be answered.

Keywords: Fat, Fat shaming, Thin obsession, Body-intolerant society, Body positivity