Revisiting Representations
Traces of the Inquisition in the Zárate Plays (c. 1650-1661) of Antonio Enríquez Gómez
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Alexander Mc Nair
When the Castilian crypto-Jewish writer Antonio Enríquez Gómez was in exile in France during from the late 1630s to the late 1640s he published works such as the Política Angélica, which openly criticized certain practices of the Spanish Inquisition (the automatic confiscation of goods and property, the use of spies and informers, genealogical investigations, and a society that favored “blood” over virtue). In unpublished works, circulated in manuscript, he went so far as to criticize the Inquisition’s public autos de fé and confer the status of martyr to its victims. It should not be surprising that such open criticism of the Inquisition disappeared when he returned to Spain incognito and began writing for the theater again under the pseudonym Fernando de Zárate (c.1650-1661). Some modern critics believed the works of “Zárate” and Enríquez Gómez could not have been penned by the same person; and since the identity of Zárate was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt several decades ago (on the basis of Inquisition case files), one critic has even gone so far as to suggest that the apparently “sincere” Christianity of the Zárate plays suggests a late conversation to Catholicism. This paper explores scenes in several Zárate plays in which religious persecution, torture, and secret prisons/tribunals make appearances. Though necessarily oblique, Enríquez is nevertheless able to level criticisms against the Inquisition and Spanish society’s anti-Semitism while writing for a Spanish Christian audience.
Silence, Resilience, and the Liminal: The Poetics and Politics of Representation in Sarnath Banerjee’s Doab Dil (2019) View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Nishevita Jayendran
This paper interrogates the quality and value of silence as resilience, located within liminal spaces in Sarnath Banerjee’s Doab Dil (2019). Structured as an informal graphic essay, Doab Dil presents ironic commentaries on ecology, nature, culture, cities and the countryside, history, fiction, work, sleep, insomnia, borders, popular culture, and the quest for meaning in life. In the process, Doab Dil combines text and drawing to construct a postmodernist intertextual mural of juxtaposed quotations, descriptions, and metaphysical reflection on the meaning and values of contemporary culture. At the points of these juxtapositions, liminal spaces are created that are characterized by a dense silence. The centrality of the liminal in the creative imagination of Doab Dil is evident in the title that signposts the fertile tract of land found at the confluence of two rivers. Recollecting Homi Bhabha on the liminal as a horizon of possibilities, this paper explores the different ways in which the poetic representation of liminality constructs spaces of resilience, which draw on the silence between confluent thoughts on the diverse themes of the work for critical reflection. How do these liminal zones of silence comment on the meaning and consequences of contemporary culture? What kinds of counter-values do they propose through their critical reflective silence? Through textual interpretation and literary criticism, this paper investigates the poetics and politics of possibilities in Doab Dil within liminality as spaces of resilience, and the role of silence as a representational strategy for a metaphysical commentary on reality.
Literature as a Tool to Develop Social and Emotional Skills among Future Teachers
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sarit Ezekiel
Social Emotional Learning (SEL) has become popular in recent years in the field of education. The underlying concept is that one should not leave the curriculum only in the field of any specific academic discipline but link it to life skills, both in the personal-emotional and social fields such as self-management, decision making, self-awareness and social awareness As a literature lecturer and pedagogic instructor who trains future teachers, I felt it was not right to leave SEL at the theoretical level but to allow experience in developing emotional and social skills while studying literature. I chose a number of courses taught in the Department of Literature, I taught them at an academic level but in each assignment I gave one question that connects the students to stories on a personal level and requires from them openness of thought, depth and emotional expression. The findings were amazing. There were students for whom the text met them at very deep points and were capable of deep emotional or social expression and there were students who simply were not capable of relating to it and remained at a very superficial level. I share findings and reveal the dichotomy between the two types of students as part of research on the relationship between emotional and social abilities in teaching students and the ability to become a teacher who attempts to develop these skills in future pupils.
