Culture and the Literary

Culture and the Literary is a study of how cultural codes are constructed, consumed and conveyed as represented in selected works of fiction and non-fiction. Examining cultural studies as a discipline by revisiting some of its seminal figures, the book includes a study of selected literary as well as non-fictional texts. It offers a unique combination of three major theoretical frames: memory studies, thing theory, and affect studies. Drawing on fictional representations, theoretical frames and historical events, this book aims to provide a unique perspective into how culture as a phenomenon is represented, reified and re-membered in the world we inhabit today.

Through an examination of the complex interplay of matter, metaphor, and memory in a diverse array of carefully selected case studies, Culture and the Literary provides a wide-ranging and theoretically sophisticated reflection on the ways in which literature navigates dominant cultural codes and narratives, reflecting, consolidating, or subverting them. Drawing on memory studies, material engagement theory, and affect studies, this daring and dazzling book makes a powerful and eloquent case for the value of close reading of literary texts for a deeper understanding of culture.--Stef Craps, Ghent University, Avishek Parui puts literary and cultural theory firmly and compellingly on the agenda of interdisciplinary memory studies.--Astrid Erll, Goethe University Frankfurt / The Frankfurt Memory Studies Platform, In Avishek Parui's splendid book, literature plays the role of a double agent: On the one hand, literature lionizes the general values of mainstream culture; but on the other hand, it constantly ironizes the very status quo of culture. The book is a gem, erudite, but also far reaching. It tackles hot issues like colonialism, the current COVID crisis, but also the eternal question: who are we as narrative beings.--Fritz Breithaupt, provost professor, Indiana University Bloomington

Avishek Parui is Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras