Le problème de l’identité culturelle dans les romans Tout s’effondre de Chinua Achebe et Un nom pour un autre de Jhumpa Lahiri

The novels Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri approach an acute and sensitive problem of the effects of colonization and of the self-exiled emigrant man. Each of the protagonists of these two novels expresses an upheaval, an inner cultural conflict. It turns out that their destiny is in a close connection with their images and emotional valences, strongly fed by a collective imaginary, by the deep reality of collective life. Thus, adherence and communication with the archetypal resources of the native community, with the essential that precedes the human condition, proves to be a vital necessity, of overwhelming importance for our protagonists.

The Image of New Woman as Portrayed in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Novel The Lowland

The last decade of the Victorian era witnessed a major shift in the social attitude of the woman. It was a break away from the patriarchal system, and women emerging as independent being and moving towards achieving gender equality. The ‘New Woman’ is considered as a precursor to the feminist movement and thus the legacy of New Woman lives on to this day. Jhumpa Lahiri, the significant writer of the Indian diaspora has emerged on the global literary scene with her remarkable writings. The novel has a compelling plot of family relations. It delineates the tender fraternal bond between Subhash and Udayan and how it gets affected by the various paths they chose in their lives. This intensely emotional tale unfolds diverse dimensions of the woman caught in the predicament of conservative cultural practices at home, political unrest in society and the life of an exile in the immigrant land. It also explores Gauri’s expression of identity, her struggle with love, Bela’s choice for individuality and pragmatism in life has turned the novel into a unique narrative. In her second novel, ‘The Lowland’ Jhumpa portrays her women characters devaluing the patriarchal setup. They break the myths of womanhood and motherhood. Prominence is given to assert their position in society by restoring self-identity than nurturing deeper family relations. They fight with courage and confront various challenges in their marital relationship.

The Theme of Diaspora in the Novel of Jhumpa Lahiri

The paper on the Indian Diaspora, discussion of multiculturalism in relation to the theme of alienation, identity and multiculturalism in the novel of Jhumpa Lahiri. The term of “Diaspora” is used to refer such people or population to leave their own homeland and settled down to another place which is so far from their own traditional homeland. Jhumpa Lahiri writes about Diaspora and alienation and between the memory of homeland and the new land, the immigrants are in a permanent mental and emotional war between the myth and customs of the old world and; freedom of the new one. In her novel, “The Namesake “(2004), she writes about the generation gap between immigrants, conflict of east-west beliefs nostalgia, cultural displacement loss of identity, alienation and despair.

Believe Me, Do not Believe Me: Jhumpa Lahiri and the Royal Family of Oudh

In Interpreter of Maladies (1999) Jhumpa Lahiri gives voice to Boori Ma, a durwan (doorkeeper) who chronicles about the easier times she enjoyed before deportation to Kolkata (previously known as Calcutta, India) after Partition of 1947. Lahiri plays with the word real implying that Boori Ma’s stories could be deciphered as real or not. Boori Ma’s fictitious life resembles the one of the Royal Family of Oudh, which Lahiri seems to be inspired by. Foreign correspondents (Kaufman, 1981; Miles, 1985; Barry, 2019) did not question the veracity of this family’s life story. In the present article, the two stories are compared: a literary and a real one. It is our intention to prove that traumatic experiences, such as Partition, cause subjects to imagine an alternative life; strategy which is unconsciously activated to heal trauma (LaCapra, 1999; Mookerjea-Leonard, 2017). The latter is what western journalists and readers failed to acknowledge

FOOD AS A CONCEPT OF CULTURE AND INDIAN CODE IN JHUMPA LAHIRI`S WRITING

The purpose of the article is to analyze the culinary concept with Indian gastronomy code analysis in the context of the transcultural paradigm in Jhumpa Lahiri`s writing (an American writer of Bengali origin). In the article we used the following methods: cultural and historical (defining the role and place of Lahiri`s writing in US literature of the twentieth century), historical and typological (determining the specifics of themes, motifs, images, story features of the writer`s works), functional (clarifying the features of Lahiri`s poetics), hermeneutic (interpretation of various aspects of the literary text), narratological analysis (specifics` analysis of Lahiri`s narrative manner), biographical (revealing the reflection of author`s personal experience in her writing), the principles of postcolonial and decolonial criticism (rethinking the problem of �otherness� in transculture discourse). The author of the article notes that food serves as conditional language for characters and as cultural code that interprets by �ours� only � Indian culture representatives. It is indicated that in the context of transcultural understanding, food and the process of its preparation are of particular importance: usual home-cooked dishes are synonymous of protection, security, peace, belonging to one�s home; instead, the presence of �other� exotic dishes makes it possible to get acquainted with the culinary preferences of another culture, as well as to trace the basic similarities and differences.Therefore, cultural culinary differences are found in the kitchen, where the characters are accustomed to spend most of the day and especially carefully prepare the dishes. An interpretation of cooking as a true art is associated with Jhumpa Lahiri`s marginalized / border characters: you need to remember how much, when, and what kind of spices add to the dishes. As a true Bengali women, the characters skillfully prepare �their� traditional dishes. As a result of cooking of two dozen dishes, the smell of mutton curry and pulao (a traditional Indian vegetable pilaf) is especially heard in the rooms. There is a �cultural mix� in the kitchen: Indian dishes are prepared with the help of American household appliances. The �food� concept embodies a cultural phenomenon and allows understanding the features of national Indian cuisine; it is a cultural code that gives meaningful information. The semantic structure of lexical units that fill the �food� concept in Lahiri`s works, as well as cultural and value aspects of this concept are widely represented. It is important to distinguish between home-made daily food or holiday treats, and food as an element of Indian national culture. The writer describes in detail the traditional Indian dishes and the usual, hastily prepared, daily American ones. The reader gets a complete picture of the traditional festive dishes of Indian cuisine. Thus, the structure of the �food� concept can be represented as follows: the names of traditional everyday food (Americans and Bengalis) and traditional American and Bengali holiday dishes. Food is directly connected with gender issues. Eating habits and the way of cooking determine a woman`s identity as well as her difference. Food emphasizes woman`s cultural affiliation: in Lahiri`s writing it is shown that food serves as sacred ritual and art for Indians, in contrast to the American habit of hunger satisfying with semi-finished products. It is noticeable that within Lahiri`s texts the verb �to eat� has a lot of synonyms: to consume, to guzzle, to have, to lunch, to be full of something, to throw down, etc. Using such a variety of lexical and semantic series of one verb, the author reveals the characters` attitude towards traditional Indian cuisine. But what important is not what synonymous series of the word �food� the author uses, but that it conveys Indian culinary customs and traditions. Expressing not meaning but sense, food continues to be an element of Indian national culture.

Transnational Women Writers in Europe: the Italian case-study

My paper is divided in two parts: the first theoretical it is focused on the importance of Transnational Studies. Comparative Studies, Gender Studies and Translation Studies are in a transitory phase, a moment of great change implicit in a new perspective that wants to take into account a ‘global’ vision on the state of art in these three fields. The canonical division between literary/cultural studies and translation is not acceptable anymore, because translation is nowadays an hermeneutical category important to understand the complexity of the world. A research area that seems to unite this new notion of comparatism and translation is that of “Transnational literatures/cultures”, where the term ‘trans’ outlines, not only the passage among cultures, literatures and languages, but also the overcoming of barriers and national borders. In the second part I analyse some Transnational Women Writers, who have chosen to write their fiction in Italian: Ornella Vorpsi (Albania), Lilia Bicec (Moldova), Geneviève Makaping (Cameroon), Christina de Caldes Brito (Brazil), Jarmila Ockayová (Slovakia) and finally, Jhumpa Lahiri (Bangladesh/USA). I analyse the reasons of their choice and the specificity of their contribution to Transnational Literatures/Cultures.