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Pablo Neruda’s Contribution to Marxist Aesthetics
(© University of Dhaka, 2025-11-05) Talukder, Tusar
Pablo Neruda underwent a transformation from a love poet to a solitary and dejected one and then to a committed one during his formative years. Precisely after he had come in close contact with the key figures of the Spanish intelligentsia, he broke up with his previous interests in romance and romanticism and subsequently embraced communist ideology and politically committed poetry. He published a literary periodical called Green Horse wherein he espoused the concept of “Impure Poetry” in contrast to that of pure poetry that came to the forefront with the catchword of “art for art’s sake” in Europe in the latter half of the 19th century. In addition, his friend Federico Garcia Lorca's assassination by the reactionary forces of Spain considerably changed his political and poetic visions. Alongside this, the onset of the 1937 Spanish Civil War impelled him to respond to the cause of the Spanish masses. His endorsement of the communist ideology helped him condemn the upsurge of international fascism at that time. Through interpreting the poetry of one of his most notable books, Spain in Our Hearts, this dissertation investigates the factors that, in multiple ways, have contributed to Neruda’s emergence as a poet of the people. Furthermore, the poetry of Canto General (1950) and Odes to Common Things (1954) contribute to his development of the Marxist concepts of art, literature, and history, widely known as Marxist aesthetics as a whole. In particular, he blends the philosophy of dialectical materialism with that of historical materialism in the aforementioned books to explore and explain social and political contradictions and tensions across the continent of South America. Firstly, in Canto General (1950), the poet attempts to identify and locate the exploitation and oppression of South American peoples by imperial powers and the capitalist system, on the one hand, and present the struggles of the workers and peasants as part of a more extensive historical process in which opposing forces clash and interact to produce social change, on the other hand. Secondly, in Odes to Common Things, Neruda, on a surface level, celebrates the value of everyday objects of daily life and, on a deeper level, intends to dignify the role of the commoners, whose efforts often go unnoticed in the class systems of society and state. Besides, he uses the Marxist triad of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis to show the upswing of oppressive political and economic structures, and emergence of social revolutions to overthrow the exploiter classes, and the possibility of building a socialist society. He highlights the deliberate omission of the workers’ and liberators' contributions and sacrifices by bourgeois forces and regimes from the textbooks of history, with the aim of misleading future generations of readers and learners. Overall, this dissertation divulges the Talukder v falsification of historical facts that stand as a threat to historicity in a whole continent like South America. This thesis also illustrates how Whitman’s idea of comradery, Quevedo’s satirical poetic style, and Mayakovski’s revolutionary ideas left a myriad of influences on Neruda and his poetry, which, afterwards, founded the basis of his Marxist philosophy. On the whole, it examines Neruda’s contribution to Marxist aesthetics, broadly exposing, on the one hand, the conflicts between the bourgeois and the proletariat as reflected in his poetry and, on the other hand, the inevitability of the proletarian revolution for social and political change that he envisions. Lastly, it argues how Neruda’s world outlook in his works widens and augments the enormous panorama of Marxist ideology and aesthetics.
A Study on Indian Women’s Colonial Travel Narratives from 1858 to 1936
(©University of Dhaka, 2024-11-18) Alam, Zerin
The figure of the colonial woman is often incarcerated in images of passivity and immobility in studies of Indian colonial archives. However, travels by Indian women to England during the high colonial period unsettle such views and suggest that women’s colonial experiences were complex and layered. This dissertation aims to address such gaps in current scholarship by recovering the voices of the Indian female travellers of the colonial period to form an epistemology of gendered colonial experiences. Using the lens of Judith Butler’s gender theory of performativity, along with postcolonial discourse analysis, I examined the travel narratives of eleven female colonial travellers to gain insights into female colonial subject formation. A close reading of the selected texts shows that women had to negotiate with the demands of discourses of gender, colonialism and anti-colonial nationalism as they self-fashioned their identities. Consequently, they enacted multiple roles of feminine, modern, mobile, nationalist, cosmopolitan and sociable selves as part of their strategy to mitigate the transgressions inherent in travel and to conform to normative gender conventions and secure social approval. The travellers’ presentations of these themes are presented in separate chapters. Additionally, the analysis of these travel narratives produces a mapping of the emotional contours and cosmopolitan dimensions of Indian female travels. By drawing on recent theoretical work on travel writing, postcolonialism and gender studies as well as analysis of recent female travel writing, my study offers an interdisciplinary perspective on Indian colonial women’s travel narratives that will hopefully widen the scope of postcolonial studies and women’s travel writing as well as contribute to women’s writing from the colonial period.
Revisiting the Conrad Oeuvre an Eastern Gaze
(University of Rajshahi, 2020) Hossain, Md. Sakhawat; Akhter, A F M Maswood
Against the backdrop of ongoing debate about Joseph Conrad being a colonialist or anti-colonialist and a conservative or liberal European writer, the present study offers a moderate view of Conrad examining his presentation of the East and the West from an Eastern perspective. While most critics have focused on aesthetic aspects, themes of human values, treatment of imperialism, moral perspectives and narrative methods in his works, a few have looked at his portrayal of Africa and the East. In his fiction, the presence of moral question, psychological reflections of characters, critical views of empire, anarchy and revolution, fidelity to duty and human experiences has made him one of the universally acknowledged modern writers. Most critics have considered the writer a genius, except some early reviewers, who, mostly British, consider his Eastern fiction too exotic, and also, some postcolonial critics who label him as Eurocentric and racist. Creating indeterminacy these debates, nonetheless, have made him appear as an ambivalent and complex writer. Much of this ambivalence and complexity arises, however, owing to his representation of different races of people in different settings of his fiction that comprise almost every continent of the world– Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia and America; and this has given his oeuvre a magical transnational aura. Thus, this dissertation appraises Conrad as a transnational writer, and even as a precursor of postcolonial literature. Drawing on Edward Said’s secular criticism, this study compares both his Eurocentric secular and contrapuntal presentation of the East with his secular criticism of the West from an Eastern perspective and offers a more nuanced point of view. It also investigates his pessimistic views about European politics of imperialism and war, Russian politics of autocracy, anarchy and revolution, and American globalization that caused widespread human suffering. The thesis is divided into six chapters. The first chapter offers a short overview of the thesis through the objective, rationale and literature review, and develops the theoretical framework drawing on Postcolonial criticism and Said’s secular criticism. The second chapter provides a short biography of the author from his childhood up to the start of the writing career and then connects the incidents of his life to his works. The third chapter examines his European perspective but at the same time traces his contrapuntal portrayal of the East and Africa, and secular criticism of imperialism. Then Chapter Four investigates Conrad’s political and social views of the West, and marks his critical skepticism about autocracy, anarchy and revolution. And the fifth chapter critically views Conrad’s Eurocentric colonial treatment of the East and at the same time explores his ambivalent and contrapuntal secular viewpoints. The sixth chapter concludes the thesis showing Conrad’s greatness as a writer and his relevance to our time.
Adrienne Rich’s Poetry: Thematic and Theoretical Alignments
(University of Rajshahi, 2019) Arif, G. M. Javed; Islam, M. Jahurul
Writing at the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century, Adrienne Rich in her last four poetry books shows that she is still committed to exploring the multidimensional changes in politics and aesthetics that have ensued from the post-World War II collapse of modernist principles like rationality, progress, unified subjectivity, and transcendental or fixed meaning. Rich here chooses not to adopt the modernist mode of straightforward political didacticism she once preferred in her poetry but curves out a trajectory that embraces postmodern strategies like self-reflexivity, indirection, and indeterminacy, on the one hand, and tropes like pun, parody, irony, and repetition, on the other. These elements of postmodern poetic language offer her the possibility of exploring the theme of aesthetics and its connection with politics alongside her favorite themes like women, race, and history. Rich’s engagement with these themes can be interpreted from various theoretical standpoints, but most importantly from postmodernism, and also from feminism and postcolonialism where they are aligned with postmodernism. Adopting a postmodern approach in her final four poetry books in this postmodern period when the society has become all the more fragmented and uncertain, Rich has not only spoken for the marginalized in a lively manner, but she has also added a new dimension to her poetry.
Man-Woman Relationship in Post-War British Drama: A Study of John Osborne And Arnold Wesker
(©University of Dhaka, 2023-01-11) Khanam, Mobashera

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