Dr Abhisek Bhakat Festivals bring excitement and happiness in life which tends to get pretty boring and monotonous time to time. The urge to do something spontaneous, wear something new, eat special cuisine, have fun filled rendezvous with dear friends and spend quality time with family- all come rushing in to make festive season joyous […]
Author: The Contour
Asha Jaoar Majhe: Experiment of Language in the Film
Subham Patar Abstract In the mid-1990, the film critics acknowledge that “a film draws on a combination of visual, aural, and verbal signifiers.” Film as a literature is based on the comparison between the structure of verbal language and the visual imagery in the cinema. But Aditya Vikram Sengupta’s Bengali feature film Asha Jaoar Majhe […]
The Spectre of Cannibalism in Patrick White’s A Fringe of Leaves
Sukhendu Das Abstract Patrick White’s take on cannibalism in A Fringe of Leaves is a least discussed issue. Australian critics felt uncomfortable to deal with it. Surprisingly, only few non-Australian critics commented on this issue. White’s take is marked by ambivalence as cannibalism tends to stand for both savagery and sacramental. The article seeks to […]
The Merchant of Venice, Historical Materialism and the Impossibility of Consciousness
Pradeep Sharma Abstract Hegel’s notion of historical development through dialectic was accepted by Marx and elaborated as ‘historical materialism,’ although Marx doesn’t agree with Hegel that the material world hinders our vision of the ‘true’ / ‘ideal’ reality. I look at The Merchant of Venice as Shakespeare’s statement on historical materialism, that it was not […]
Volume 6, Issue 1, 2, 3, 4 | December 2020
EDITORIAL From July 2019 The Contour could not be published due to some inadvertent reasons relating to technicalities. However, we could have perhaps overcome these hurdles over time if it was not the Pandemic Covid 19 that we suddenly found ourselves engulfed with in the meantime, causing uncertainty, panic, agony, trauma, blackness and bleakness in […]
Anxiety in Using ICT and Online Reading Strategies of Service Sector Employees
P Madhumathi Abstract The fast-changing digital environment necessitates employers to upgrade their marketing strategies with technological applications. Subsequently, to meet the employer’s demand, the employee must update their ICT knowledge to increase the product’s sales. The paper aims to understand the capabilities of the employees from different backgrounds in reading the text online. The study […]
Absence of the Real from the Reel: Politics of Exclusion and Cinematic Aloofness for the Dalit Cause in Popular Bengali Films of Recent Decades
Probhat Chandra Hazra Junior Research Fellow, Dept. of English, Visva-Bharati Abstract The construction of a homogeneous national identity through the filmic narratives has been one of the most persistent tropes of the Indian cinematic culture for a long time now. The popular Hindi cinema in particular has made a conscious attempt to appeal the elite […]
When Detective seeks the Ghost: Exploring the Paranormal in Saradindu Bandyopadhyay’s Baroda and Byomkesh Stories
Raj Raj Mukhopadhyay M.Phil. Scholar, Department of English, Visva-Bharati Abstract The eminent Bengali litterateur Saradindu Bandyopadhyay is famous for his two extremely popular characters, notably Baroda, the bhutanweshi or the ghost-hunter and Byomkesh Bakshi, the satyanweshi or the truth-seeker. However, the frameworks within which these two figures operate are entirely different from each other. Whereas […]
The New Poetry: Tagore, Whitman and Sri Aurobindo
Dr Goutam Ghosal Professor of English, Visva-Bharati University Abstract Despite Sri Aurobindo’s problem of expression between 1917 and 1920, when he was serializing The Future Poetry in The Arya, he could speak a lot, in wonderful moments of revealed prose, about the possibility of a dynamic revival of poetry from the ancient times. He finds […]
Vijay Tendulkar’s Kamala: A Pathetic Picture of Women in Indian Society
Shovan Dhibar Abstract Since the Vedic Age women remain under the shadow of men, the dictator of the then society. With almost same ability and talent they were subdued with the ways of rituals, manners and religious workings. They are learnt and understood that they are nothing but the shadow of men whose only divine […]