The Criterion: An International Journal in English

Volume 17, Issue 3 · June 2026 · ISSN 0976-8165

Verses Across Borders: A Study of Vikram Seth’s Three Chinese Poets

Dr Divya Pradhan

Digital Object Identifier

10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.42

The paper is a study of a unique text in the corpus of Indian writing in English that has been overlooked by academia. Vikram Seth’s Three Chinese Poets, published in 1992, is a translation by an Indian writer from Chinese into English. The study will adopt a qualitative textual analysis to examine Vikram Seth’s translation of the three classical Chinese poets, Li Bai, Wang Wei, and Du Fu, by situating Seth’s text within the framework of translation’s role in world literature. It will employ a close reading of the translated poems through a historical and contextual paradigm, highlighting their contribution to the movement of these ancient poems across temporal and cultural borders. A post-colonial critique of the history of literary translation, focusing on Western writers’ translations of Chinese poems, will be used to uncover the literary hierarchies that have shaped the texture of these translations. The analysis will also draw on paratextual references from Vikram Seth’s prefaces and notes to emphasise Seth’s attempt to cosmopolitanise world literature.

Dr Divya Pradhan. “Verses Across Borders: A Study of Vikram Seth’s Three Chinese Poets.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 3, June 2026, pp. 680-708. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.42.

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The Criterion: An International Journal in English

Volume 17, Issue 3 · June 2026 · ISSN 0976-8165

Desire, Christ and the Flesh: Reading The Wife’s Lament and The Dream of the Rood and Julian’s Revelations

Ms.Sreeja Chowdhury

Digital Object Identifier

10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.16

Extant scholarship on literary representations of the spiritual during the medieval era has mostly focused on Christocentric discourses via theological treatises and structuralist or semiotic methods. This essay undertakes a Lacanian study of three medieval texts—Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love, “The Wife’s Lament,” and The Dream of the Rood—to demonstrate how Christ’s identity is problematised: as the lover, the beloved, the Other, the lost object, and finally displaced entirely in the form of the Christian Cross, relegated to a realm of Derridean spectral non-presence. Through psychoanalytic and deconstructive frameworks, the essay traces the oscillation of Christ’s ontological status across these texts, revealing how the feminine body and its inscriptions destabilise Christocentric subjectivity.

Ms.Sreeja Chowdhury. “Desire, Christ and the Flesh: Reading The Wife’s Lament and The Dream of the Rood and Julian’s Revelations.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 3, June 2026, pp. 223-245. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.16.

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The Criterion: An International Journal in English

Volume 17, Issue 3 · June 2026 · ISSN 0976-8165

Singing The Unconscious: A Psychoanalytic Look at Bhojpuri Music

Jayant Kumar

Digital Object Identifier

10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.44

Bhojpuri music is often dismissed as vulgar, low or sensational, existing discussions have rarely examined how various figures and images function to express, displace and sublimate psycho-sexual desires. For instance in many songs, the image of “Bhauji” is presented not merely as a family member but as an object of teasing, fantasy, and attraction, occupying a position between familiarity and prohibition. The paper addresses this gap by analysing how such figures allow socially restricted desires to find displaced expression.
Drawing on Freudian psychoanalysis, the study treats the lyrics of Bhojpuri songs as cultural texts through which unconscious and repressed desires are articulated. The analysis focuses on two interrelated dimensions. First, it examines the image of “Bhauji” as a sublimated sexual object whose liminal position within the familial structures enables the displacement of Oedipal desire. Second, it explores the repeated use of mouth-related imagery, such as kissing, tasting, and consumption, which Freud described as the oral stage of psychosexual development. These motifs are read as symbolic forms through which desire persists without direct genital union.
Methodologically, the paper undertakes a close textual analysis of selected lyrics of Bhojpuri songs, chosen for their recurrent use of kinship-based erotic figures and oral imagery. The paper argues that Bhojpuri songs function not simply as reflections of social relations but as sites where repression, displacement, and sublimation give form to unconscious fantasy within popular culture.

Jayant Kumar. “Singing The Unconscious: A Psychoanalytic Look at Bhojpuri Music.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 3, June 2026, pp. 727-739. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.44.

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The Criterion: An International Journal in English

Volume 17, Issue 3 · June 2026 · ISSN 0976-8165

A Writer’s People and A Metropolitan Postcolonial Man’s Ways of Looking and Feeling: A Critical Study

Prof. Kafeel Ahmed Choudhury

Digital Object Identifier

10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.18

This write-up intends to negotiate and analyze a writer who is a postcolonial by birth and metropolitan by profession and location. In the opening of A Writer’s People: Ways of Looking and Feeling, we get a glimpse of V. S. Naipaul, a metropolitan postcolonial man and his acknowledgement of his struggle to get into the world where circumstances compelled him since his childhood to move around, to feel accommodated and settled in the unsettled postcolonial world, be it Trinidad or Metropolitan England. His struggle is also a struggle of a postcolonial writer to get a start in the writing profession, unlike most other writers including his contemporaries who lacked proper ways of looking and feeling. He wanted to be a writer with a different world-view. The book in question is a commentary on the different ways of looking and feeling of his contemporaries, the different writers and political figures including Mahatma Gandhi and their many ways of looking and feeling, seeing and not seeing that had altered the configuration of the world.

Prof. Kafeel Ahmed Choudhury. “A Writer’s People and A Metropolitan Postcolonial Man’s Ways of Looking and Feeling: A Critical Study.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 3, June 2026, pp. 272-289. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.18.

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The Criterion: An International Journal in English

Volume 17, Issue 3 · June 2026 · ISSN 0976-8165

Memory, Erasure, and Trauma: Deconstructing the Symbolism of the Violet Vein in “The Vein of Memory”

Ms. Drisya K.

Digital Object Identifier

10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.37

The paper examines how memory plays a remarkably significant role in the development of the plot of the short story “The Vein of Memory” by K. R. Meera. In the story, Meera portrays an elderly woman writer who could not make use of her creativity productively because of her familial duties and marital bondage. The old woman is presented as a person who has lost her memory in an attempt to commit suicide. Thus, memory plays a substantive role, creating an abrupt turning point in this story. Here, the paper attempts to deconstruct the storyline by probing the woman writer’s psychology and examining the status of her memory through a profound examination of the narration of her experiences in her suppressed marital life. The paper states that the protagonist is pretending memory loss or erasure of memory to mitigate the psychological trauma of the experiences she underwent as well as the pain of her unfulfilled ambitions.

Ms. Drisya K.. “Memory, Erasure, and Trauma: Deconstructing the Symbolism of the Violet Vein in “The Vein of Memory”.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 3, June 2026, pp. 605-619. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.37.

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The Criterion: An International Journal in English

Volume 17, Issue 3 · June 2026 · ISSN 0976-8165

Food, Kitchen and Healing in Banana Yoshimoto’s Novella Kitchen

Dr. Rajkumari Sujata Singha

Digital Object Identifier

10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.34

In this paper, an attempt is made to analyse cooking and kitchen spaces as channels of healing, as portrayed in the novella Kitchen, by Banana Yoshimoto. Cooking food becomes the nonverbal language of expressing loneliness and rejuvenation by the characters. Roland Barthes’ idea of food as a system of signs will be used to show how food expresses grief and intimacy. Georg Simmel’s theory of urban alienation and the “blasé attitude” adopted by city dwellers as a defence mechanism, will be roped in to understand how the kitchen becomes a haven for the protagonists after the loss of dear ones. Michel de Certeau’s theory of highlighting everyday practices as meaningful acts which aid in healing and providing comfort, will be used in the analysis. These theorists will be used to show how cooking food and the kitchen space become emotional arenas that help individuals to cope with grief and handle the alienation of modern existence. The paper begins by locating the importance of food in Japanese Literature and then moves on to the analysis of the novel. This paper highlights the act of cooking and the kitchen space as emotional anchors that can combat the loneliness of modern life and help the characters rebuild their broken lives.

Dr. Rajkumari Sujata Singha. “Food, Kitchen and Healing in Banana Yoshimoto’s Novella Kitchen.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 3, June 2026, pp. 560-572. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.34.

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The Criterion: An International Journal in English

Volume 17, Issue 3 · June 2026 · ISSN 0976-8165

Diasporic Reality, Dislocation and Rebirth: A Critical Study of the Novel Manhattan Music by Meena Alexander

Mrs. Moumita Bera

Digital Object Identifier

10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.11

Manhattan Music by Meena Alexander explores the themes of diasporic reality, dislocation, and rebirth. The paper examines how Meena Alexander’s novel explores the diasporic experience and how the effect of dislocation influencing the nature of the characters. The objectives of the study are to study the diasporic experience as depicted in the novel, Manhattan Music, to analyse the theme of dislocation in Meena Alexander’s novel, to analyse the characters from the multicultural setting of the novel, to examine the novel critically in the postcolonial perspectives. The paper analyses the diasporic reality faced by the characters in the novel Manhattan Music dislocated from their homeland. In the host land they not only felt alienation and rootlessness, they were trying to improve their life in new land which indicated the rebirth of self the immigrants, that is an urgent need to go with the flow.

Mrs. Moumita Bera. “Diasporic Reality, Dislocation and Rebirth: A Critical Study of the Novel Manhattan Music by Meena Alexander.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 3, June 2026, pp. 147-162. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.11.

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The Criterion: An International Journal in English

Volume 17, Issue 3 · June 2026 · ISSN 0976-8165

The Wounded King’s Accusation: Narrative Management of Ethical Instability in the Vali Episode across Ramayana Traditions

Ms Saishilpa Janamanchi, Prof. Y. L. Srinivas

Digital Object Identifier

10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.32

The Kishkindha Kanda contains one of the Valmiki Ramayana’s most anxiously commented-upon scenes: Rama kills Vali from concealment, and Vali, mortally wounded, formally accuses him before dying. That question of justification has been argued for centuries. This paper asks a different one—how different traditions handle the accusation, how long they allow it to slow the narrative, and at what moral threshold each decides it can be set aside. Reading across seven retellings—Valmiki’s Kishkindha Kanda, the NCERT Bal Ramkatha, Raghaveshananda’s devotional text, Amar Chitra Katha, Pattanaik’s The Book of Ram, Sagar’s television Ramayan, and Neelakantan’s Vanara—as well as digital spaces where sympathy for Vali circulates without institutional mediation, the paper traces how each tradition develops its own formal method for setting the accusation aside. Drawing on Jameson’s concept of the political unconscious and Ramanujan’s comparative framework, the paper proposes that the length of time each text keeps the accusation active is not merely a formal variable: it is a measure of the institution’s capacity to absorb an ethically unresolved episode.

Ms Saishilpa Janamanchi, Prof. Y. L. Srinivas. “The Wounded King’s Accusation: Narrative Management of Ethical Instability in the Vali Episode across Ramayana Traditions.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 3, June 2026, pp. 528-547. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.32.

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The Criterion: An International Journal in English

Volume 17, Issue 3 · June 2026 · ISSN 0976-8165

Spatial Analysis of the Kitchen in Asako Yuzuki’s Butter

Ms Shilpa Uparkar

Digital Object Identifier

10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.33

Published in Japan in 2017, Asako Yuzuki’s Butter problematises the conventional kitchen, a space traditionally occupied by women to fulfil the socially scripted gender roles. The protagonist, Rika’s spatial and somatic transformation is analysed through the intersecting theoretical frameworks of Edward W. Soja’s Spatial Trialectics and Bertrand Westphal’s ‘polysensoriality’. This transformation is an act of feminist resistance against the rigid Japanese cultural norms. Her sterile Firstspace kitchen after an interaction with Manako Kajii becomes a symbolic arena of defiance and desire. The visceral consumption of butter and subsequent rich food alters not just the space that Rika occupies but also remaps her body. The paper ultimately highlights how Yuzuki's depiction of simple culinary acts functions as a form of resistance in a culture where appetite for both food and identity is restricted and policed.

Ms Shilpa Uparkar. “Spatial Analysis of the Kitchen in Asako Yuzuki’s Butter.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 3, June 2026, pp. 548-559. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.33.

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The Criterion: An International Journal in English

Volume 17, Issue 3 · June 2026 · ISSN 0976-8165

Analyzing the Collective Trauma of Hazaras in Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner

Ms. Sneha Das

Digital Object Identifier

10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.17

This paper delves into the portrayal of collective trauma experienced by the Hazara community in Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner. Through a psychological and socio-political lens, the research explores themes of marginalisation, racial persecution, and intergenerational trauma. Characters such as Hassan, Ali, Sohrab, and the Hazara women represent the emotional and cultural weight of historical injustices. This paper examines how literature can serve as a voice for marginalised communities, providing insight into their lived experiences and the necessity for collective healing.

Ms. Sneha Das. “Analyzing the Collective Trauma of Hazaras in Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 3, June 2026, pp. 246-271. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.17.

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