Narratives are significant as they are life lessons. The narratives we exchange in the form of gossip, shared experiences, stories, metaphors, myths, and legends enable human collaboration whereas continuous repeated narratives constitute the basis of behavioral patterns in society. Sometimes troubled narratives leave a cathartic effect or provide an escape from the mundane life. Surviving troubled times truly tests our faith. When enduring a difficult time, it is important to acknowledge and accept that it is just a transient phase.

There has always been a symbiotic relationship between suffering and literature. Suffering utilizes different forms of narratives like memoirs, autobiographies, stories, diaries about subjects’ narratives of experiencing chronic illnesses like cancer, pandemic, plague, death of a loved one etc. and their relationship to the construction of self. Narrative discourse is inevitably consequential for social life and individual experience.

Writers, dramatists, and poets have been reflecting through different forms of narratives the vagaries of their time and age. For example, T.S Eliot in the poem “The Wasteland” talked about the aftermaths of the First World War on human soul while Woolf enunciated the treatment of women in the 20th century as well as antiwar sentiments.

When world war broke out, poets like Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen poured their souls out in heart wrenching poems while Woolf described the trauma of soldiers who fought the deadly war in Mrs. Dalloway.

The suppressed colonies rose, and the native writers started sharing their dreadful experiences. Chinua Achebe, in his novels, depicted how brutally dark people were treated back then, while writers like Salman Rushdie and Amitav Ghosh shared their views on the painful partition of India.

We can go back and forth in the boundless time and all that we will find is the rise of a narrative in ‘troubled times.’ These writings have helped us evolve over time.

With this purpose in mind “The International Conference on Narratives of Troubled Times: Reflection in Studies of Humanities, organized by Amity School of Languages Lucknow in collaboration with Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University, aims at bringing together experts in the field of Narration and Studies in the field of Humanities, to offer insights into key areas of enquiry in addition to exploring the massive evolution of narratives over time.