Gurucharan College's annual lecture delivered, literaria released in Silchar

SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

SILCHAR: The release of the literary journal 'Literaria' and the 8th annual oration on the topic 'The beginnings of the English novel: A reintroduction' delivered by Dr Jaydeep Chakraborty, assistant professor of English, Assam University, organized by the department of English, Gurucharan College, and attended by teachers and students on Saturday created the right ambiance to further glorify its distinctive position among all the 25 departments of the premier Institute in northeast. In fact, as Dr Panthapriyo Dhar, head, department of English, to set the tone of deliberations said, "The Department of English has many records to its credit. It is the first to hold the national seminar and also the first to organise international seminars in 2019 and 2020."

Professor Jyoti Lal Chowdhury, president, Governing Body of the College, was all praise for the laurels achieved by the department and its head, Dr Panthapriyo Dhar, for taking the faculty forward with its literary and creative ideas. He laid stress on research oriented exploratory works by teachers and students, going beyond the confines of prescribed books and the four walls of the College. Dr Bibhas Deb, Principal, also appreciated the performance of English department. Dr Mihir Kanti Nath, vice-principal, said the achievements of the department could be possible with combined efforts of both teachers and students.

Dr Jaydeep Chakraborty, the guest speaker, who delivered the informative, enlightening and enlivening oration, began his speech by citing a verse from Geoffery Chaucer's Prologue to the Canterbury Tales which speak of the glory of spring and which contained the seeds of ideas that may even be expressed in ornate prose as a genre in English novel was basically a 18th century creation. But that being said, there were other prose writings like the novel, but they did not fit into broad category of a novel as we understand today. He said the novel is a non classical genre because it did not exist in the Graeco-Roman period and also does not find reference in Aristotle's 'Poetics'

Dr Jaydeep Chakraborty also dealt with the novel from the modern and post modern perspective and its theoretical formulations by referring to Edward Said and George Lucas. Indeed, the death knell of post colonialism was sounded by globalization, but the speaker inferred that globalisation was also form of colonisation. In fact, colonialism has made and unmade us. The speaker referred to the two seminal texts –Ian Watt's 'The Rise of Novel' and Arnold Kettle's 'An Introduction to English novel' as the most preliminary texts to understand the nuances of the growth of English and its development during the Victorian period. The speaker also made a reference to the novel 'Anandamath', by Bankim Chandra in translation in which it is said that English is not an enemy but can be used to write back at the empire.

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