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This thesis explores the Urdu poetry of Perveen Shakir, a Pakistani, third-world, Muslim, female poet, in her socio-cultural, religious and political context. The entire four collections written between 1977 and 1990 are analysed in order to depict the stages of her life: girl, woman, mother and poet. The collections were written during extreme political pressure of martial law, dictatorship and the Islamisation of General Zia’s regime (1977-1988). The thesis argues that Shakir, an educated self-aware Pakistani Muslim woman, is formulating new feminist ideas and concepts of individual freedom through her unconventional love poetry; in that way crossing the limits of her traditional ‘feminine’ nisvani demands, whilst she is also struggling under the extreme cultural, political and religious pressure of a Muslim society which conflicts with her liberal ‘feminist’ thinking. Shakir is constantly shifting between two positions: a traditional ‘feminine’ nisvani and a ‘feminist’ position. Influenced by her Eastern culture she clings to the traditional identity, sometimes due to her own personal choice, and sometimes under her cultural pressure, unwilling to alienate her traditional self which understands that a husband is a symbol of respect and security for a Pakistani woman. Influenced by western culture she reveals her liberal feminist voice openly writing about her sexual needs and also writing about her marginalised position from which she criticises the politics of patriarchy. This intercultural influence in the Urdu poetry of Shakir is reflected through these overlapping and co-existing positions, where she is neither a true feminist poet by western standards (anti-sexist and anti-patriarchal) nor a clear traditional ‘feminine’ nisvani. In the end, she compromises in order to survive in her Islamic culture, re-adjusting and rethinking her liberal feminist ideas. The main concern of the thesis is to explain the complex and multi-layered meanings of the term ‘woman’ in the Pakistani cultural context. The analysis has shown that in Pakistani culture the concept of self or individual freedom for a Pakistani Muslim woman is not a simple question. This study focuses on various stages of Shakir’s biographical journey employing the theoretical framework of dialogism which reveals the development of feminisms, and how they balance in the end. No critical study on Shakir from a third-world postcolonial Pakistani perspective, analysing her poetry within a theoretical framework, has been written so far, and therefore this study is an invaluable contribution to current scholarly knowledge of the discipline. This study also contributes in another way, as it is the first work in English at this level.

The present study investigates Asia’s first Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s (1861-1941) writings for children, situating his work in the tumultuous time of colonial India marching towards independence. The study makes an original contribution to Tagore scholarship and the field of children’s literature arguing that Tagore’s designated protagonist, the Bengali child, subverts social and political structures of power and authority, and is a vehicle for the author’s hopes for future. The discourse of Tagore’s literature for children posits, hopes for, and construes an implied child reader - the imagined nation’s future citizens. His constructions of childhood, the study claims, are symbolic, oscillating between the reflective and the transformative and synthesising the author’s intentions, fears, desires, values and attitudes towards childhood. In order to reach its overarching conclusions, the present study has considered the political and social contexts of the original production of the texts which is reflected in the study’s theoretical assumption - the historicist reading of childhood informed by postcolonial and power-oriented theories of children’s literature. Close reading of a selection of Tagore’s writings for children suggest that Tagore’s own ideologies about childhood were decisively shaped by the colonial time and the colonised place in which he lived, and his images of childhood concentrate on physical landscapes of the indigenous Bengal in order to construct an imagined decolonised landscape, and form consciousness of national identity. The present study has also argued that Tagore’s fictional world(s) of children are a result of restorative re-imagining and re-inventing, not just manifestation of his personal grief and experiences. Additionally, Tagore has employed fictive children for a variety of conflicting and complementary uses: mighty and empowered children in fantasy critique fascist regimentation, but their images are juxtaposed elsewhere with realistic portrayals of helpless and disempowered children who are unable to seek agency against societal oppression. Tagore’s persistent but persuasive portrayals of uninspired children in mechanised colonial education and of coercive teachers and teaching methods illuminate his educational ideologies and confirm a prescriptive authorial presence in the narrative. Yet, the present study has contended that Tagore’s imagined childhood is an empowered time and space in which fictive children are able to acquire agency and self-awareness through a variety of pleasurable and unpleasurable experiences, functioning as a democratic channel where child-adult power relations are constantly being negotiated.

A Mouthful of Silence is a novel set in Manchester. It is about a middle-aged Indian man, PK Monghia, who is full of regrets and bitterness about getting old and the steady decline of his business. He still has an appetite for love and happiness, but feels trapped in his marriage to Geeta. Their only child, Sammy, is a disappointment too. Born after several miscarriages, he is the focus of excessive maternal devotion on the part of Geeta and an object of contempt in the eyes of PK, who wanted a sporty son, a reflection of his own golden youth. A new woman enters the barren landscape of PK's emotional life. She is Esther Solomon, rich, beautiful, vivacious. She is all that his life is not. She also happens to be the wife of a competitor, Cedric Solomon, who is successful and powerful and a constant reminder of what PK might have been. PK and Esther are drawn to each other and embark on a love affair that distracts PK and fills him with guilt that he pushes aside time and again. PK begins neglecting his business and his family, and he fails to notice his son's growing friendship and obsession with a more street-wise girl, Alice. Sammy gradually changes from a molly-coddled boy into a surly, uncommunicative teenager with secrets. Geeta meanwhile watches the slow unravelling of her family life, and PK is never quite sure whether she has discovered his affair. Events unfold that compel PK to make choices. He is forced to confront his ambiguous morality and to question the nature and meaning of love in all its guises. My thesis explores the main theoretical approaches surrounding diaspora and the concepts of home, belonging and nostalgia. It is my aim to extrapolate from the theoretical framework and apply their relevance and limitations to the study of the diasporic condition. My primary focus will be on the Indian diaspora within the United States and its portrayal in Bharati Mukherjee and Jhumpa Lahiri's short fiction. More specifically, I wish to look closely at how nostalgia is both employed as a method and represented as a theme in creating and/or shaping the sense of belonging and home within their fictional narratives. Finally, I will place their work within the larger context of diaspora literature and analyse the overall diasporic literary response to established and often problematic understandings of nostalgia, home and belonging.

Ce travail de recherche vise à présenter une collection de récits traditionnels persans, soit tirés et traduits des ressources indiennes, soit écrits et composés directement en persan dans le sous-continent. Notre attention s'est portée sur les récits en prose qui détiennent plusieurs emprunts de la tradition et la culture indienne, et ceux qui sont enrichis par des éléments narratifs et imaginaires fabuleux. Ces spécificités apparaissent dans de divers aspects : la structure du récit-cadre, les thèmes principaux et les personnages des contes. Les récits indo-persans sélectionnés sont présentés en détail par des informations sur leurs auteurs / traducteurs, la date et le lieu de composition, leurs thématiques, leurs sources originales, les manuscrits disponibles et d'autres références. La recherche actuelle est également un effort pour la pratique et le développement de la perception symbolique dans les récits classiques. Touti-Nâme, choisi comme le corpus de notre étude, nous fournit des scènes sur la vie sociale, les relations intimes et conjugales dans les contextes individuels et sociaux. J’ai examiné les thèmes dominants de la ruse des femmes, du conflit entre le désir et la loi, du rêve et du rire à travers des approches mythiques et symboliques. Le rôle prépondérant des personnages féminins et des perroquets sont étudiés profondément dans les contes. J'ai aussi essayé d'analyser les aspects psychiques des personnages par le biais de l'approche psychanalytique jungienne. Des exemples concrets de l'autorité et des jeux de pouvoir entre les sexes sont donnés dans Touti-Nâme comme spécificité des sociétés traditionnelles patriarcales. / The present research aims to introduce a collection of Persian traditional narratives, either translated from Indian sources, or written and composed directly into Persian language in the sub-continent. Our focus has been on prose narratives which hold multiple specificities borrowed from Indian tradition and culture, and are enriched by fabulous and imaginary narrative elements. Such specificities appear in diverse aspects : the frame structure of the stories, the leading themes and the typical Indian characters. These stories are presented in detail by providing information about their authors / translators, date and place of composition, themes, original sources, available manuscripts and other references.The current research is also an endeavor to practice and develop symbolic perception in classical stories. Touti-Nâme, chosen as our target text, demonstrates social life, conjugal relationships and power-struggle in both individual and social contexts. The dominant themes of women’s guiles and tricks, love and law conflict, dream and laughter have been examined through mythical and symbolic approaches. Women characters and birds such as parrots have gone through profound studies due to their predominant roles within the tales. I have also tried to study psychological aspects of story characters and their role in the events by means of the Jungian psychoanalytical approach. Concrete examples of gender authority and power-games in traditional patriarchal societies have been given in Touti-Nâme.