Tag: Literature and Linguistics

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Up and Down the City Road: London in the Other’s Eyes

This paper probes into two facets of the life of Indian immigrants in post-war London portrayed in Anita Desai’s Bye-Bye, Blackbird. On the one side, there is the expected and familiar outburst of nationalistic xenophobia on behalf of the domestic population of this urban landscape, triggered by the arrival of numerous immigrants from the Commonwealth

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Talking Like a (Foreign) Man: Diaspora Teenage Languages Shaping Urban Spaces in Gautam Malkani’s Londonstani

This paper aims to investigate the role of language for the British Indian diasporic community teenagers of London, for whom the research of an identity also includes the definition of belonging within a postcolonial frame. Teenage is a moment of passage, symbolizing the passage into the 21st century, which requires a re-definition of all conventions

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Rugao and Water Garden in Seventeenth Century China

My paper focuses on Rugao, a city on the northern bank of the Yangtze River, during the period of the fall of the Ming dynasty and the consolidation of Qing rule in the mid and late seventeenth century. The unique status of Rugao was due to its location in one of the most prosperous and

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The Soundscape East of The River: Sonic Icons in Nagai Kafū’s Writings

By focusing on the auditory dimension of Nagai Kafū’s (1879-1959) representation of Tokyo in his most renown – and admittedly most representative – novel, Bokutō kidan (A Strange Tale from East of the River, 1937), my paper attempts to provide new insights into this author’s critique of the modern(ized) city. Repeatedly modified and rebuilt in