Sunday, March 9, 2003		Books

Literary encyclopaedia for beginners
Jaspal Singh

Narrative Modes in Punjabi Novel
by N.S. Tasneem. Published by Indian Institute of Advance Study, Shimla. Pages 118. Rs 175.

NIRANJAN Singh Tasneem has contributed eight novels to Punjabi literature besides a couple of books and a few articles and research papers in English. He has received both the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Shiromani Sahitkar Purskar for his contribution to literature. He has remained a fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, as well and the present treatise on Narrative Modes in Punjabi Novel is the result of his stint there.

Tasneem has divided this study into two parts, the first one deals with "Modern Literary Theories" and the "Novel as an Art Form"; the second is about narrative technique used by Punjabi novelists since Bhai Vir Singh’s Sundari that appeared towards the end of the 19th century. The studies in the field of narratology beginning with Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale up to post-modern ruminations of Jean-Francois Lyotard, Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man and so on are briefly commented upon. In between Tasneem discusses Formalism, Structuralism, semiotics and dialogics, and gives short introductory notes on the methods devised by Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva and Mikhail Bakhtin besides giving a brief introduction of Prague Structuralists. He has also given a rudimentary introduction of the Feminist Paradigm, Politics of Culture and Derridian Deconstruction.

Novel as an art form begins with Henry James and goes on to discuss a dozen or so western novelists. In the second part Tasneem undertakes a survey of the Punjabi novel taking into account such aspects as plot construction, character delineation, stream of consciousness and novel as an epic. This survey begins with Bhai Vir Singh and ends with Ajit Rahi via Nanak Singh, Jaswant Singh Kanwal, Sohan Singh Seetal, Gurdial Singh, Ram Sarup Ankhi, Surinder Singh Narula, Kartar Singh Duggal, Narinderpal Singh, Dalip Kaur Tiwana, Surjit Singh Sethi, Sukhbir S. Soz, Manjit Rana, Mitter Sain Meet, Jagjit Brar, Fakhar Zaman, Ajit Kaur, Mohan Kahlon, Swarn Chandcan, Darshan Dheer, Inder Singh Khamosh, Karamjit Singh Aujla, Chandan Negi and Amarjit Singh.

One can well imagine the ambitious nature of the project and the kind of treatment that could have been possible in a hundred odd pages. There are scores of books available in the market entirely devoted to each aspect of modern literary theory. Tasneem’s attempt does not go beyond thumbnail entries given in an encyclopedia of modern thought. One does not understand the purpose behind the first two chapters of the book pertaining to "Modern Literary Theories" and "Novel as an Art Form" when such a lot of well-written material is already available both in English and Punjabi. Of course, for a student preparing for his graduate studies in English literature such elementary notes can be of some use. The second part of the book, comprising a survey of the Punjabi novel from the point view of plot character and narrative technique may be of some interest to a non-Punjabi reader since most students of Punjabi literature are already conversant with such things.