The wooden house

Dahal, Tanka Prasad (2013) The wooden house. MPhil(R) thesis, University of Glasgow.

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Printed Thesis Information: https://eleanor.lib.gla.ac.uk/record=b3005590

Abstract

My project consists of two complementary parts.
First is a series of short prose narratives that build into a more comprehensive memoir exploring the formative world out of which my poetry grows. I have set myself the challenge of writing as it were from memory rather than after memory. I don’t politicise the memories or judge them. I try to be faithful to what I actually remember and to honour its otherness, not to enhance or exaggerate it.
The second part of the project consists of poems drawing on some of the same material, enhancing and reorganising it and finding in it experiences which, though rooted in the particulars of that distant world, are more universal in nature.

Memoir

My fragments of memoir centre around childhood, growing up and receiving my early formal education and acquiring formal language. They include descriptions of a typical farmers’ village in Nepal where I was born. Temporally, these events of my life are distant in time. The geographical location is far from here. But as I recall the place and the events, they unfold one after another and they seem to come very close.

I begin with the wooden house, the tiny world of a child that starts expanding. The child steps out onto the courtyard, from the yard to the kitchen garden, the field, the school, the bazar and so on.

The child’s communion with ants, frogs, reptiles and cattle is another step. He makes friends. He enters the world of knowledge and formal language. The alphabet opens the door to books, education and creativity.

The village has no means of communication, no power supply, no transportation. A radio in the neighbourhood is the only link to modern technological invention. But there is transformation. As the child grows up to be an adult, the village acquires electric power, television, and telephone.

Poems

Wherever I am today, I remain in memory and imagination rooted to that rural landscape where I grew up. That geography and its society are always central to me.
In the poems I have composed, and to which I am adding new work, I recreate that geography, home and culture. I reflect on the myth of home and its shifting meaning.
Through this creative process, I also observe the texture of hybridized living. I also register my anxiety over a troubled homeland.

Item Type: Thesis (MPhil(R))
Qualification Level: Masters
Keywords: House, village, poems, crops, farming, fields, cattle, soil, manure, school, college.
Subjects: P Language and Literature > PE English
P Language and Literature > PL Languages and literatures of Eastern Asia, Africa, Oceania
P Language and Literature > PR English literature
Colleges/Schools: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > English Literature
Supervisor's Name: Schmidt, Prof. Michael and Kei , Dr. Miller
Date of Award: 2013
Depositing User: Mr Tanka Prasad Dahal
Unique ID: glathesis:2013-4810
Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
Date Deposited: 15 Jan 2014 11:50
Last Modified: 15 Jan 2014 11:59
URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/4810

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