LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 17:8 August 2017
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
         Renuga Devi, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Nature at Cross-roads: An Ecocritical Analysis of
Sundara Ramaswamy’s Tamarind History

R. Saritha


Abstract

Ecocriticism is the contemporary theory which explains the affiliation between literature and the earth. Ecocritical theory explains the significance of the natural world and it centers on the principal of relating physical environment with the textual writing. This environmental outlook is employed to explain the natural milieu and its decline in Sundara Ramaswamy’s Tamarind History translated in English by Blake Wentworth. This Tamil novel illustrates the events that revolve around a tamarind tree of a small town which stands for generations and character’s associated with it. The town's wilderness and its pasts are admired by an old wanderer and he transmits it to the younger generation through stories. The novelist in the fiction depicts the progress which human beings bring forth to improve the town. However, commercial development takes a toll on the pristine nature and the characters in the novel reflect on the loss of the wilderness. Sundara Ramaswamy brings out changing human ways impacting environment. Ecocritical reading of the novel drives home the point of destruction of natural atmosphere of the town with rise in modern developmental progress.

Keywords: Ecocriticism, Nature Degradation, Environment, Deep Ecology, Modernization, Anthropocentrism.

Eco Criticism

Modern world is fast changing with scientific inventions and technology. The progress is primarily considered as boon to humans, where it establishes the superior rationality of intelligent mind in work to improve conditions for general amenity. These changes is creating disturbances in the natural balance. The impact of fast-paced growth is resulting in environmental crisis. Literature as a respondent to this contemporary issue, gives rise to the theory of ecocriticism. Twentieth century arousal ecocriticism is defined through Cheryll Glotfelty’s (1996) words in The Ecocriticism Reader: The Landmarks in Literary Ecology as “study of relationship between literature and physical environment”. (Glotfelty xviii) The physical environment includes the non-human world other than human beings with the consciousness of the entire ecosphere, thereby it is called “earth-centered approach”. (Glotfelty xviii) Describing the process of modernization and its corrosion of environment is Sundara Ramaswamy’s Tamil novel Tamarind History translated and published in English in 2013 by Blake Wentworth. This modern classic Tamil work stands as one of its kind in the narrative world, which is centered on a simple tamarind tree of a small town as the title indicates. This paper tries to analyze Tamarind History in the light of ecocritical perspective, as it helps in relating the depiction of the titular tree and its setting playing an eminent role in multifarious characters present in the novel.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

R. Saritha
Research Scholar
Department of English
Pondicherry University
Puducherry – 605014
Union Territory of Puducherry
India
rsaritha12@gmail.com

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