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Editorial
Sreetanwi Chakraborty
Chief Editor- Litinfinite Journal
Assistant Professor
Amity Institute of English Studies and Research
Amity University Kolkata

The span of literature and cultural studies is multifaceted and multilayered. There are various parts of an existing tradition, culture, socio-linguistic patterns, and reverberations of ethnicity and race that are represented in literature. In civil society, there are various strands of functionality that are to be taken into account. With each change in the cultural paradigm, the range of literature can also get diversified. Litinfinite Volume V, Issue II addresses these major instances of literary and cultural studies and how they can be incorporated as part of framing new postcolonial narratives. The first paper of this issue is titled Eco-consciousness in North-East Indian Indigenous Folktales written by Sanarul Hoque and Dr. Punyashree Panda, and this paper deals with the constant need for environmental preservation and restoration depending on the aesthetic and ecological balance in our surroundings. Traditional folktales, mythology, and stories that have been orally disseminated have the environment and ecological factors serving a significant socio-cultural role in the lives of the people. The writers have explored the effective utilization of land and territory as part of the self-growth process in the narratives of the Northeast. Anthropocentrism as a major component in cultural growth and development occupies a major role in the write-up.

Sadia Binte Kausar, lecturer in English from Dhaka, Bangladesh dwells at large on Brueghel, Van Gogh and Chirico: Inter-Animation of Painting and Writing in some Ekphrastic Poems. Her paper is a keen understanding of the nuanced patterns of Ekphrastic poems, and how as forms of art, they create mobilization among the readers. On the one hand, there is an idea of what art can create, and on the other hand, how art’s metamorphosis into the finer realms of poetry can be interpreted. Even the most mundane images of human life signify something more fruitful when turned into Ekphrastic poems. When it comes to an in-depth understanding of literature and cultural studies, films usually convey a message in all its fluidity. Lillian Shoroye from Ibadan University, Nigeria takes an insight into Tunde Kelani’s Women: A Look at Patriarchy in Selected Nollywood Films through a Womanist’s Lens and she discusses the Nigerian director Tunde Kelani’s major works Thunderbolt and The Narrow Path and the role of women in Kelani’s films. Motion pictures, patriarchy, and the role of existential cultural practices- everything plays a major role in allowing the growth of a human being. She also narrates the intensity in elucidating the concept of talking back, resistance and the idea of female emancipation. Most of the films of Kelani are adapted from texts that highlight major social issues.

The next paper is titled The Marginalized Mudbloods and The Squibs of Hogwarts: A Study of ‘Disability’ Through A Medium of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Series by Debangana Basu and Dr. Paromita Mukherjee. In it, the authors discuss the concepts of racism, stigma, marginalization, and disability studies that can be interpreted in terms of the Harry Potter series. Recognition of the disability groups and understanding of the concept of group identity and existence form a major study in their narrative. After this we have a paper titled Precarity of Self: Identifying the Liminal Borders of Self in Shahnaz Bashir’s The Half Mother by L. Swathi and Dr. B. Padmanabhan. The paper takes into consideration a study of the precarity of people’s lives in Kashmir. It is about border, location, and their idea of an individual existence that is a crucial deciding factor in allocating them a position in the global map.  In this issue, we also have a translation and two book reviews. Dr. Manish Prasad and Dr. Prasant Chakraborty translate Rabindranath Tagore’s Rangomancho from Bengali and highlight the major critical features that can be found in Tagore’s idea of the stage. The central point of interest is how the Jatra as a theatrical form becomes popular among the audience and what socio-cultural function the jatra serves.

The first book review is Sohini Sen’s A Drop of Golden Sun: Re-presenting Tagore’s Gitanjali by Dr. Lalitha Sarma where she discusses Tagore’s original Bengali poems and the transcreation that Sohini Sen has poetically exemplified. Recontextualizing Sen’s version of Gitanjali does not become an arduous task and there is no artificiality involved in the process of transcreation. The necessity for decolonization and a decolonial reading of the Bengali texts is a new way of truly re-reading the seminal text of Tagore. In this volume, I have also reviewed the poetic peregrination of Dr. Jaydeep Sarangi’s book Memories of Words which is a fine tapestry of memory, space, self-actualization, and identity. The book is divided into three different segments and the poet uses stark images and symbols to highlight childhood days, cultural, and artistic patterns across various spaces and locales that have contributed to his mind’s growth.

So, here we present Litinfinite – Volume V, Issue II for our readers.

I express my heartfelt thanks to all our esteemed editors, reviewers, and contributors.

I offer my sincerest thanks to Penprints Publication, for their constant technical support.