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Disneyfication

     We know how Walt Disney parks and resorts look like. Now, imagine, a city being commercially transformed to look like that. The transformation of a city so, to look like a Disney creation is known as Disneyfication or Disneyisation. The term was coined by American Sociologist Sharon Zukin. This term is usually used in a negative sense because the disneyfication of a city drains it off its originality. In literature, this term can be applied to the narrative of urban and suburban spaces.     It is deeply rooted in commodification and consumer culture. It is a cultural capitalism that commodifies everything. It includes spectacle, consumption activities and spatial control (surveillance). Unfortunately, the poor are excluded from this unaffordable consumption. It widens the gap between the high class elite and the common people.      The history of disneyfication can be traced way back to colonialism. It is considered to have formed out of...
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UNDERSTANDING HARD TIMES: AN ANALYTIC NOTE BY F.R LEAVIS

-By Arya James F.R Leavis in this famous essay which appears in his  The Great Tradition  talks about why he considers  Hard Times  as the best work of Charles Dickens. Right in the beginning he calls this brilliant work which is set in the fictional industrial Coketown a masterpiece. He asserts that  Hard Times  has, of all Dickens’ works, all strength of his genius and it is a completely serious work of art. Leavis says that it is because of the traditional approach to ‘the English novel’ that  Hard Times  did not get the recognition it so deserved. He observes a lot of unexacting expectations from the author by the readers of those times. He says Henry James’  The Europeans  also suffered like  Hard Times  because of these unexacting expectations. The title of the novel confirms Dickens’ inspiration. Usually Dickens’ criticism of the world around him is casual. But in  Hard Times , he has a comprehensive vision of the i...
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