Introduction to Literary Interface

Contents: Preface. 1. Introduction: concept of literary interface. 2. Post-colonialism and subaltern identity. 3. Author-translator interface. 4. Writer-reader interface. 5. First world-third world interface. 6. Conclusion: a symbiotic interface. Appendices. Bibliography.

This book introduces the concept of literary interface by exemplifying the multiple literary interfaces inherent in the readings and translations of the Third World writer Mahasweta Devi by her compatriot and international critic Gayatri Spivak. While examining the impact of Devi’s works on Spivak’s translatorial project, an assessment of Spivak’s translation theory and praxis is carried out, informed by the existing conventions and avant-garde theories of translation that has helped evolve the current discipline of translitation studies. This is followed up by a critical evaluation of spivak’s translations of Devi’s stories in the light of critical responses they have drawn and and its implication on the writer and her work. Various chapters focus on the multilayered interfaces between the writer and the reader between the writer and the translator, and between the First World and the Third World in their postcolonial critical context. The interface between the two writers comes out as multifaceted but mutually enhancing and symbiotic. Spivak has through her erudite English translations and interpretation have transposed Devi and her texts from the margins to the center of current literary discourses and from the local to the global stage. Spivak’s radical theories, on the other hand, have been inspired and nourished by Devi’s fiction.