Seventeenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

This study would like to examine “Manifestations of Poverty” in the light of Global Literature. For this purpose, it would like to investigate the selected literary texts, like Kazi Nazrul Islam’s Poverty, Thomas Montague Traherne’s Poverty, Charles Dickens’ Hard Times, and Ngugi Wa Thiong’s Petals of Blood. It aims to look at the real picture of poverty of the age that has been reflected in their works with the passage of time. It would like to focus upon the manifestations of poverty and its relation with the current age. Nazrul, Dickens, Ngugi, and Traherne have led their personal lives with great hardship, bitterness experiences, psychological problems, and trauma and paranoia during their lifespan. They have tried to draw a light upon personal inflicting senses and mental disorders of the poor communities. They have wanted to explore the practical circumstances and dark aspects of human society, community, and culture with a view to bringing about revolutionary changes of the poor community of the world around. Of course, such writers and their literary works are the symbol of today’s society as well as literature. In this sense, Nazrul, Dickens, Ngugi, and Traherne are the representatives of the age. The researcher’s philosophy is that poverty is profoundly dealt with human life; no litterateur can express his perfect feeling and imagination if he has not tasted the bitterness experience of poverty in life. Litterateurs have focused upon the practical experiences of the social problem of their times in the name of poverty.