Future Literature

2.  J. Long beautifully states “Behind every
book is a man; behind the man is the
race; and behind the race are the
natural and social environments whose
influence is consciously reflected.”

3.  The literary canon of 20th and 21st century
foregrounds an aesthetic shift which is
more transitional; experimental, more
anxious, more liberal and self-
interrogating too.

4. Sunita Sinha’s words sum up the spirit:
“The two world wars, the social and political
upheavals, the consolidation and expansion of
multinational capitalism, the emergence of
the informational age, the struggle of post-
colonial voices after the end of the British
Empire and the changing configuration of a
new multicultural population have led to a
restructuring in the sphere of literary studies.”

5.  It refers to literatures written in
English (and in regional languages) in
former colonies.
 The postcolonial writers writer to
establish their individual identity, and
try to show not only they have gained
independences but successfully use
the colonizer’s language as a vehicle
for creative expression

6.  The result - now English literature is –
Literatures in English
 There are Englishes (differs from Queen’s
English)
Mulk Raj Anand -Untouchable
Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart
Bapsi Sidhwa - Ice Candy Man
Kamala Markandya - Nectar in a Sieve
have devised regional languages like Hindi,
Punjabi, Parsi etc. with standardized
English

7.  The major reason has been the dire need
of introducing the First Nations with the
Idea that the nations once being ruled,
are not at all without literature and
culture. Also, to show them how they
mistreat people with different skin
colour and race in their countries.
 The Diasporic writers like V.S. Naipaul’s “A
House for Mr. Biswas” - portray the
struggle of migrants in foreign lands: how
they feels alienated and isolated, how they
long for the feeling of belongingness and
how indifferently they are treated.

8. Is not post-colonial still colonial?
 This is because postcolonial theory makes use of
structuralism and poststructuralism, the critical
approaches of the West; postcolonialism,
though it is about the non-West, is an offshoot
of postmodernism. What is still more disturbing
is the attitude of the intellectuals of non-West,
who still look to the West for intellectual
guidance. The Globalization instead of being a
two way traffic becomes a one way traffic. As
Gayatri Spivak says “a belief in the normality
of the other”

9.  After the II World War
 Lyotard gives an account of postmodernity
which suggests the collapse of “Grand
narrative” (metanarrative) and their
replacement of “little narrative”
 Lyotard argues that “postwar innovations in
science and technologies of language – notably
linguistics, cybernetics, algebra and computing
– have made knowledge into an
informational commodity.”
 Hence narrative and non-narrative knowledge
turn as ‘language game’

10.  Baudrillard says postmodern age is the culture
of the ‘simulacrum’ His work “Simulation
(1983)” concerns with the culture of
hyperreality – models replace the real.
 Disneyland becomes America
 Hyperreality is everyday reality.
 Depthlessness, meaning on the surfaces,
weakened sense of historical time, a
conflation of high and mass culture, a
commodification of art and a self-
referentiality are the some of the features of
postmodern texts.
 Even Subaltern studies, Feminism are the
offshoots of postcolonialism and
postmodernism

11.  Digital or Cyber literature is the latest one
 The works of creation are exclusively on and for
digital devices.
 Writer relies on cyber medium like website,
blogs or social media pages.
 Ex: Jason Nelson is digital poet and net-artist.
 Michael Joyce’s 12 Blue and
 Jim Andrew’s Stir Fry Texts - digital literature.

12.  man is impatient, edgy and hungry for
knowledge – internet, mobile and
computer
 No time to stop, read and enjoy
 Knowledge is wider with little words
 Books, newspaper, journals (The New York
Times and Wall Street) take a back-seat in
this electronic age
 Cybernetic reading replaced linear, closed,
solitary reading
 It is transforming literary reading
 The reader is continuously exposed to

13.  Kids have short attention spans
 Long drawn out sentences, never ending
paragraph, detailed long description are not
comprehensible
For example Hardy’s description of
landscape
 Literature has faced uncountable changes
In the age of Cybernetics
 It is redefined as per the needs of a younger
population

14.  SMS has created new room for urban
quotations and poems.
 Stories can now be presented in 140
characters or less.
 Flash fiction and micro fiction have
sidelined long narrative
 Earlier we spent hours in libraries to find
answers for their questions
 Now we have GOOGLE
 Even we have dictionaries and word web to
find meaning for words

15.  The “6 word novel” is a new field for writers
to experiment.
Ex:
 “After she dies, he came alive” by Rebecca
James
 “One gun, two shots, three dead” by Marcy
 This is a new fashion of writing which is
challenging and creative. It is easy to write
long narrative but it needs a special talent to
write novel in 6 words.

16.  Six word novels leave the readers curious
and thoughtful
 The meaning is also left to reader’s
interpretation
 It requires a lot of creativity and
imagination.
 We are moving ever closer to the “Death
of the Author” that Roland Barthes has
pronounced.
 The text now has more and more ‘gaps’
that makes it more and more readerly
than writerly.

17.  Blogging sites have given opportunity to
amateur writers
 Flash fiction (Micro-fiction, Drabble,
Nanofiction, Twitfic, ) is an ‘in’ thing.
 It has restricted words and the idea has to
be flashy and catchy
For ex. 1. Aesop’s fables. (It is loved by all
due to its concise form of writing and
implied moral)
2. Even O’ Henry, Earnest Hemingway
and Anton Chekov are flash fiction writers

18.  Twitter fiction refers to original, self-
contained works of fiction in each tweet
publication
 Twitter fiction is being classified into
certain new literary genres which are given
new names by combining the name of the
different genres with the name of the
application.

19.  Therefore, thriller becomes – Twillers,
 Haikus – Twaikus
 short stories – Twistories or twisters
 As an expression of postmodern literature,
twitter fiction share characteristics of
micro-fiction (printed), such as brevity,
multiple meanings and inter-textual
ties.

20. Advantages.......
 The mentioned forms are not only new
trends and ways of enhancing but also
re-altering literature as an art.
 It has diverse, exigent and very
spontaneous forms unlike the
conventional.
 It gains immense popularity
 It gives you the pleasure of knowledge and
quenches your curiosity in small and
controlled doses.
 It is accepted because of their demand

21.  Blogging, twittering, micro blogging, 6
word novel, all of them are changing the
trends of literature with regards to reading
and writing.
 It is helping to decentralize the process of
who gets to publish what in the world of
literature.

22. Disadvantages ..................
 It degrades the classics and the
conventions of literature.
 Gives way for abuse of language and
superficiality
 Especially on Twitter for example:
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen has
become: “Woman meets man called Darcy
who seems horrible. He turns out to be
nice really. They get together”

23.  These are non-formal free from styles of
writing and they often neglect
grammatical errors, wrong use of
vocabulary and have little respect for the
great works of literature form which some
of them copy.
 These are shorter than short stories, flashier
than flash fiction and now they have
become “Twititure”
 SMS and facebook poetry have been claimed
to have degraded the language, vocabulary,
form and conventions of writing.

24.  Urban words and slangs are becoming
common to every mouth. - zombie Jesus,
directionally challenged,
 Nor they are considered as any form of
valid language
 Grammar is lost and almost
disappeared.
 SMS language ruined the role of
vocabulary and spelling.
 Spelling with missing vowels are now
growing famous

25.  Nobody cares for missing a comma or
punctuation
 In cybernetic culture, hypertext may survive as
an art form by offering pleasures for virtual
immediacy, spontaneity, rich web of texts
in various media and interactivity for the
reader.
 Hypertext version is a boon to revive
literature.

26.  Boring – Mankind understand how to
dismantle and reassemble the most complex
and unpredictable in machines’ language
 Writing diaries is tedious , instant writing
like facebook, twitter, and other networking
sites is a lot easier.
 Today’s world is far richer in words and
concepts and signs than the world of yester
years
 Whether it is good or bad, it is undetectable
and unknown.
 Future only decides it...............

27. Thank You