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Viswanathan, Uma. "Polyphony in Midnight's Children." Florianópolis, SC, 2007. http://repositorio.ufsc.br/xmlui/handle/123456789/90361.
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Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura Correspondente.Made available in DSpace on 2012-10-23T09:05:47Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 237733.pdf: 1472969 bytes, checksum: 8d095e405689ab82889826549f7a05c0 (MD5)
This dissertation explores the different voices or polyphony in Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children. The essence of polyphony, according to Bakhtin, who discussed this term as a literary concept, is the presence or use of different independent voices that are not merged into one dominant voice. Hence, to listen to the polyphony in the novel, I approach the text with a view to explore the multiplicity or the co-existence of different meanings rather than to find a final, single meaning. For this, I focus on the aspects of different narrative modes such as history, polyphonic novel with carnival features, the epic, myth, fantasy, and folk tales in Midnight's Children. Within each of these modes various voices or viewpoints are explored. The eclecticism and postmodern features in the novel do not lead to a negation of meaning but to multiplicity of meanings. In our age of rapid changes in concepts, styles, and modes of representation, it is more appropriate to direct our attention to multiple realities than to look for one definitive, unchanging meaning. Further, polyphony means a dialogue between various entities such as the author, the narrator, the characters, the reader, the form of the narrative, the content of the narrative, and so on. Each one of these entities takes on a different aspect in different contexts of time, space, and culture. This means that the voices in the reading of the novel go on multiplying. Reality is capable of being given many meanings. In other words, there is not one reality but several. Reading a novel such as Midnight's Children as a polyphony of different voices in a dialogue can serve as an analogy for a mode that we can adopt in our attempts to understand our world and realities in a dialogic manner. Esta tese explora as diferentes vozes ou polifonia no romance Midnight's Children de Salman Rushdie. A essência da polifonia, de acordo com Bakhtin, o qual discutiu este termo como conceito literário, se concentra na presença ou no uso de vozes diferentes e independentes, que não se fundem em uma única voz dominante. Portanto, a fim de dar ouvidos a tal polifonia, aborda-se aqui o romance com o intuito de explorar a multiplicidade e a coexistência de diferentes significados, ao invés de buscar um sentido único e cabal. Para tanto, o trabalho investiga os aspectos de diferentes modos da narrativa, tais como história, romance polifônico com características de carnaval (no sentido Bakhtiniano da palavra), o épico, mito, fantasia e contos folclóricos. Dentro de cada um destes modos, várias vozes ou pontos-de-vista são explorados. O ecletismo e as características pós-modernas do romance não levam a uma negação de sentido mas a uma multiplicidade de significados. Nesta era de mudanças rápidas em conceitos, estilos e modos de representação, torna-se mais apropriado direcionar nossa atenção a realidades múltiplas do que procurar um sentido único, imutável e definitivo. Além disso, polifonia implica um diálogo entre várias entidades tais como o autor, o narrador, os personagens, o leitor, a forma da narrativa, o conteúdo da narrativa etc. Cada uma destas entidades assume um aspecto diferente em diversos contextos de tempo, espaço e cultura. Isto significa que as vozes na leitura do romance se multiplicam infinitamente. Pode-se dar à realidade inúmeros significados. Vale dizer, não há uma realidade, mas várias. A leitura de um romance como Midnight's Children como uma polifonia de diferentes vozes em diálogo pode servir como uma analogia para um módulo que podemos adotar em nossas próprias tentativas de entender o mundo e as diferentes realidades de uma forma dialógica.
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Radavičiūtė, Jūratė. "Postmodernism in Salman Rushdie's Novels Midnight's Children and Shame." Doctoral thesis, Lithuanian Academic Libraries Network (LABT), 2011. http://vddb.laba.lt/obj/LT-eLABa-0001:E.02~2011~D_20110307_142144-11026.
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The dissertation investigates the postmodern features of Salman Rushdie’s novels Shame and Midnight’s Children within the theoretical framework of postmodernism. The inward-directed approach to a literary text, which has been chosen as a basis for the research, incorporates the body of texts by the famous theorists of postmodernism Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Ihab Hassan, Jean Baudrillard and others. With the view to the indeterminacy of the approach, the concept of decentering, embracing such terms as the elimination of the transcendental signified, supplement, simulacrum, indeterminacy, the death of the author, has been chosen as a key concept to discuss text-oriented propositions. The analysis of Salman Rushdie’s novel Midnight’s Children explores the undermining of the traditional connotations of synecdoche. The interpretation of the text reveals how the strategy of play is employed to incorporate traditional images into the postmodern narrative of the novel. The connotations attributed to different images are constantly subjected to subversion and undermining in the text. The investigation of the concept indeterminacy with the view to the narrative of Midnight’s Children focuses on the imagery related to the concept of the void and its supplements. The analysis of Salman Rushdie’s novel Shame draws on the concept of the image as a simulacrum/supplement, employing J. Derrida and J. Baudrillard’s theoretical propositions. It uncovers the detachment of... [to full text]Disertacijos tyrimo objektu pasirinktos postmodernizmo apraiškos Salman Rushdie romanuose Vidurnakčio vaikai ir Gėda. Tyrimo teoriniu pagrindu buvo pasirinktas į tekstą orientuotas požiūris, atstovaujamas šių mokslininkų: Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Ihab Hassan, Jean Baudrillard ir kt. Atsižvelgiant į pasirinkto požiūrio neapibrėžtumą, pagrindine teorine sąvoka buvo pasirinkta išcentrinimo sąvoka, kuri yra sietina su šiais terminais: transcendentalinio subjekto nesatis, suplementas, simuliakras, neapibrėžtumas, autoriaus mirtis. Salman Rushdie romano Vidurnakčio vaikai interpretacijoje tiriama tradicinių sinekdochos reikšmių transformacija. Analizuojant atskleidžiama, kaip rašytojas naudoja žaidimo strategiją tradicinių įvaizdžių panaudojimui postmoderniame kūrinyje, nuolat transformuodamas ir neigdamas įvaizdžių reikšmes. Romano Vidurnakčio vaikai naratyvas analizuojamas neapibrėžtumo sąvokos pagrindu. Pagrindinis dėmesys šioje interpretacijoje skiriamas įvaizdžiams, siejamiems su tuštumos ir suplemento sąvokomis. Salman Rushdie romano Gėda interpretacijoje dėmesys skiriamas postmodernaus įvaizdžio kaip simuliakro/suplemento sampratos analizei. Teorinis interpretacijos pagrindas- J. Derrida ir J. Baudrillard veikalai. Analizė atskleidžia postmodernaus įvaizdžio ir realybės santykio nesatį bei realybės suplementų pažeidžiamumą. Apibendrinant, Salman Rushdei romanų interpretacija atskleidžia išcentrinimo sąvokos sudėtingumą ir neapibrėžtumą, bei bendrą... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]
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Chakraborty, Madhurima. "Midnight's Children and Subaltern Pasts Salman Rushdie Provincializing Europe /." [Gainesville, Fla.] : University of Florida, 2003. http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/UFE0001216.
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Vintrova, Magdalena. "Olfactory images and creation of meaning in Gogol's "The Nose" and Rushdie's Midnight's Children." Thesis, Texas A&M University, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/1280.
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In my thesis I argue that Gogol's "The Nose" and Rushdie's Midnight's Children are texts in which both authors are acutely aware of the fact that they write within a larger discursive framework, supported and developed by the privileged and ruling class of both societies. These grand narratives are in fact selected interpretations of reality, which circulate in the public sphere, designating the desired 'readings' of various sociocultural phenomena. By means of reiteration and enforcement through governmental powers, the privileged narratives produce and inscribe meaning onto objects and events, turning them into icons with very specific and restricted signification. In this way, truth and meaning are under control of select individuals and interest groups. I propose that Gogol in "The Nose" and Rushdie in Midnight's Children use nasal discourse to discern the manipulative process of ideological intervention, which selectively labels specific discourse and interpretation as the truth, and imposes it upon the life and history of the governed community. To utilize the olfactory in a manner challenging the dominant narratives, the authors construct nasal images as essentially ambiguous. In this way they point out to the fluid and unstable nature of reality. In the world of their fiction, reality does not have a singular meaning; every sign is open to interpretation, producing a new meaning, depending on the circumstances of the interpretative act. The nose itself is chosen for this symbolic function for two reasons: the physiognomic tradition of reading faces nests moral ambiguity in the nose, and scent is the most ambiguous of sensory stimuli. Chapter I focuses on the structural role of the olfactory, in Chapters III and IV I discuss how Rushdie and Gogol employ and adapt physiognomic theory to constitute the olfactory as ambiguous images. In Chapters V and VI show that both authors install the olfactory-introduced ambiguity into the very foundations of their texts.
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Walawalkar, Sanjot Aroon. "Retelling histories: magical realism in Gunter Grass's Die Blechtrommel and Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children." The Ohio State University, 2005. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1409836356.
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Srivastava, Neelam Francesca Rashmi. "Secularism in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's children and Vikram Seth's A suitable boy : history, nation, language." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2004. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:228c0018-d71f-441b-b485-276b73111dd2.
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This thesis is a comparative study of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children (1981) and Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy (1993). It compares the novels' representations of the postcolonial Indian nation-state and of the conflict between secular and religious perspectives in the Indian public sphere. The novels are interpreted as responses to specific moments of crisis in the so-called "secular consensus" of the Indian state: Midnight's Children to the Emergency of 1975, A Suitable Boy to the rise of the Hindu right in the early 1990s. The aim of this study is to establish secularism as an interpretative concept in South Asian literature in English. Each chapter examines different aspects of the texts in relation to secularism. The first chapter outlines two different theoretical positions, Seth's "rationalist" and Rushdie's "radical" secularism. The second examines the question of minority identity in the two novels. The third explores the different narrative structures that shape their ideas of Indian citizenship. The fourth compares their differing versions of India's national past. The fifth interrogates the status of English as a secular language in the Indian context by examining the interaction between English and Indian vernaculars in the two texts. The dialogic form of the novel has been appropriated by postcolonial Indian writers in English in order to stage contrasting religious and secular worldviews. This dialogism, it is suggested, may offer the possibility of opening up the public sphere to different modes of communication not exclusively defined by rationalism.
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Bell, Sunanta Wannasin. "Spatialization of fictional worlds and interpretive controversies in the Satanic Verses, Midnight's Children and Shame." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2005. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.430249.
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Quazi, Moumin Manzoor. "The Blurred Boundaries between Film and Fiction in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, The Satanic Verses, and Other Selected Works." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1999. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc278605/.
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This dissertation explores the porous boundaries between Salman Rushdie's fiction and the various manifestations of the filmic vision, especially in Midnight's Children, The Satanic Verses, and other selected Rushdie texts. My focus includes a chapter on Midnight's Children, in which I analyze the cinematic qualities of the novel's form, content, and structure. In this chapter I formulate a theory of the post-colonial novel which notes the hybridization of Rushdie's fiction, which process reflects a fragmentation and hybridization in Indian culture. I show how Rushdie's book is unique in its use of the novelization of film. I also argue that Rushdie is a narrative trickster. In my second chapter I analyze the controversial The Satanic Verses. My focus is the vast web of allusions to the film and television industries in the novel. I examine the way Rushdie tropes the "spiritual vision" in cinematic terms, thus shedding new light on the controversy involving the religious aspects of the novel which placed Rushdie on the most renowned hit-list of modern times. I also explore the phenomenon of the dream as a kind of interior cinematic experience. My last chapter explores several other instances in Rushdie's works that are influenced by a filmic vision, with specific examples from Haroun and the Sea of Stories, "The Firebird's Nest," and numerous other articles, interviews, and essays involving Rushdie. In my conclusion I discuss some of the emerging similarities between film and the novel, born out of the relatively recent technology of video cassette recorders and players, and I examine the democratizing effects of this relatively new way of seeing.
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Jordan, Rachel. "Provinializing [sic] world literature Tristram Shandy and Midnight's children as precursors to current postcolonial critical theory /." Connect to this title online, 2009. http://etd.lib.clemson.edu/documents/1263409888/.
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Ayoub, Dima. ""The privilege and the curse" of the cosmopolitan consciousness : redefining Ūmmah-gined communities in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's children and Ahdaf Soueif's The map of love." Thesis, McGill University, 2005. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=98536.
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Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children and Ahdaf Soueif s The Map of Love both construct cosmopolitan figures, who through their narratives, attempt to reformulate nationalist constructions of nation. This study compares Rushdie and Soueif's configuration of the cosmopolitan global consciousness and its rootedness in the postcolonial local centers of Bombay and Cairo respectively. The comparison shows that the multiply determined identity of cosmopolitans can both impede, as well as allow for, the active participation in the social and political life of the country in which they inhabit and aim to represent. This thesis considers Rushdie and Soueif's journey back into postcolonial centers where the contested threshold between homogenous constructions of national identity and the heterogeneity of cosmopolitans has to be negotiated before productive critique and reform can begin at home.
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Caddell, Heather E. "The corporeal word : an examination of the body and textuality in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's children and Don DeLillo's The body artist." Virtual Press, 2005. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/1313069.
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This study examines the complex interplay between textuality and bodily performance by tracing their development within these two novels. Both texts are fundamentally concerned with the body and its interaction with a dominant culture. Often, the corporeal frame is posited as a physical text in which the social mores, cultural ideologies, and historical framework of a character's society are expressed through the bodies of its citizenry. However, both protagonists struggle to achieve an autonomous subject position outside the realm of the dominant culture, with varying degrees of success. At the end of Midnight's Children, Rushdie subverts the body's position as authoritative text by aligning the voice of record with textual production. Conversely, DeLillo's protagonist refutes the ability of linguistic representation to adequately convey her pathos, and instead utilizes her body art as the most effective means of communicating the atmosphere of alienation and fear which characterizes the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.Department of English
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Hollis, Victoria Caroline Bolton Jonathan W. "Ambassadors of community the history and complicity of the family community in Midnight's Children and the God of Small Things /." Auburn, Ala, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10415/1668.
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Pirbhai, Mariam. "The interplay between exile-in-narration and narrators-in-exile in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's children, The Satanic Verses and The Moor's Last Sigh /." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape11/PQDD_0001/MQ43932.pdf.
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Zambare, Aparna V. "The shadows of imperfection, a study of self-reflexivity in R. K. Narayan's The guide, Taslima Nasrin's Lajja, and Salman Rushdie's Midnight's children." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape9/PQDD_0005/MQ45386.pdf.
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Davies, Hamilton. "The roles of the "empirical" and of the "fictional" in J.G. Farrell's Troubles (1970) and The Singapore grip (1978) and Salman Rushdie's Midnight's children (1981)." Thesis, Kingston University, 1991. http://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/20549/.
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Heise, Henriette. "Food & words : the culinary and the alimentary as critical tools : Iris Murdoch's The sea, The sea, Thomas Bernhard's Holzfallen and Salman Rushdie's Midnight's children." Thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.594105.
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Food is a material substance, eating a vital every-day physical need. However, food is at the same time a cultural substance and an ingredient of narratives. The present study explores the potential of the culinary and alimentary aspects of food, located in the realms of both the physical and cultural, as tool for critical analysis. In three case studies, this thesis shows that the culinary and alimentary can provide new insights into literary texts. Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea (1978), Bernhard's Holzfallen (1984) and Rushdie's Midnight's Children (1981) are part of the literary canon, yet food in these novels has never been read systematically or considered in relation to the concepts of artistic and cultural production implicitly problematized by the culinary and alimentary aspects of the texts. This study sets out to show that food is an excellent critical tool in relation to concepts of art and narration, which it implicitly destabilizes and questions. The study is divided into four chapters. from which a comparative conclusion is drawn. Chapter I locates food within literature by presenting its varied conventional uses in fiction and sets up the theoretical framework of the subsequent literary analysis. A selection of relevant theories of or involving food is outlined in this part. These theories look at food from the angles of anthropology, sociology, psychoanalysis and philosophy. These are used as critical lenses in the textual analyses of the subsequent three chapters. Chapters 2 to 4 provide critical analyses of the three novels, beginning with The Sea, The Sea, in which food is least structurally central, continuing with Holzfallen, which is structured around a meal, and ending with Midnight 's Children, wherein the narrator consciously aligns food with narrative, cooking with narration and listening! reading with eating. The case studies reveal new insights about the chosen texts, as well as illustrating that food is an excellent, often overlooked critical tool for exploring questions of art and narration.
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Radavičiūtė, Jūratė. "Postmodernism in Salman Rushdie’s Novels Midnight’s Children and Shame." Doctoral thesis, Lithuanian Academic Libraries Network (LABT), 2011. http://vddb.laba.lt/obj/LT-eLABa-0001:E.02~2011~D_20110307_142131-12871.
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The dissertation investigates the postmodern features of Salman Rushdie’s novels Shame and Midnight’s Children within the theoretical framework of postmodernism. The inward-directed approach to a literary text, which has been chosen as a basis for the research, incorporates the body of texts by the famous theorists of postmodernism Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Ihab Hassan, Jean Baudrillard and others. With the view to the indeterminacy of the approach, the concept of decentering, embracing such terms as the elimination of the transcendental signified, supplement, simulacrum, indeterminacy, the death of the author, has been chosen as a key concept to discuss text-oriented propositions. The analysis of Salman Rushdie’s novel Midnight’s Children explores the undermining of the traditional connotations of synecdoche. The interpretation of the text reveals how the strategy of play is employed to incorporate traditional images into the postmodern narrative of the novel. The connotations attributed to different images are constantly subjected to subversion and undermining in the text. The investigation of the concept indeterminacy with the view to the narrative of Midnight’s Children focuses on the imagery related to the concept of the void and its supplements. The analysis of Salman Rushdie’s novel Shame draws on the concept of the image as a simulacrum/supplement, employing J. Derrida and J. Baudrillard’s theoretical propositions. It uncovers the detachment of... [to full text]Disertacijos tyrimo objektu pasirinktos postmodernizmo apraiškos Salman Rushdie romanuose Vidurnakčio vaikai ir Gėda. Tyrimo teoriniu pagrindu buvo pasirinktas į tekstą orientuotas požiūris, atstovaujamas šių mokslininkų: Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Ihab Hassan, Jean Baudrillard ir kt. Atsižvelgiant į pasirinkto požiūrio neapibrėžtumą, pagrindine teorine sąvoka buvo pasirinkta išcentrinimo sąvoka, kuri yra sietina su šiais terminais: transcendentalinio subjekto nesatis, suplementas, simuliakras, neapibrėžtumas, autoriaus mirtis. Salman Rushdie romano Vidurnakčio vaikai interpretacijoje tiriama tradicinių sinekdochos reikšmių transformacija. Analizuojant atskleidžiama, kaip rašytojas naudoja žaidimo strategiją tradicinių įvaizdžių panaudojimui postmoderniame kūrinyje, nuolat transformuodamas ir neigdamas įvaizdžių reikšmes. Romano Vidurnakčio vaikai naratyvas analizuojamas neapibrėžtumo sąvokos pagrindu. Pagrindinis dėmesys šioje interpretacijoje skiriamas įvaizdžiams, siejamiems su tuštumos ir suplemento sąvokomis. Salman Rushdie romano Gėda interpretacijoje dėmesys skiriamas postmodernaus įvaizdžio kaip simuliakro/suplemento sampratos analizei. Teorinis interpretacijos pagrindas- J. Derrida ir J. Baudrillard veikalai. Analizė atskleidžia postmodernaus įvaizdžio ir realybės santykio nesatį bei realybės suplementų pažeidžiamumą. Apibendrinant, Salman Rushdei romanų interpretacija atskleidžia išcentrinimo sąvokos sudėtingumą ir neapibrėžtumą, bei bendrą... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]
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Berkeley, Cotter Nuno. "Winding Back the Clocks : History and fiction in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children." Thesis, Högskolan Dalarna, Engelska, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:du-25495.
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Olalquiaga, Mayra Helena Alves. ""Paradise lost" and the narration of nation in Salman Rushdie´s Midnight´s Children." Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/1843/ECAP-7D4KAD.
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This thesis proposes a study of Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" as a re-reading of John Milton's "Paradise Lost". Milton's epic has been read in terms of British imperialism and linked to a tradition of affirmation of nation. Taking up "Paradise Lost", "Midnight's Children" dialogues with the epic's stature of upholder of nationality and suggests that the perception of nation-ness associated to it informs also the independent post-colonial Indian national identity. But as the nation's explosive heterogeneity surfaces "Midnight's Children" characterizes it more as an imagined community instead of the stable homogeneity its narrator first believes it to be. This leads to a questioning of the nation as the privileged space in which to negotiate meanings and identification. At this point "Midnight's Children" highlights and adapts Milton's concept of the 'paradise within' as a better positioning before these difficulties. In its proposed reading of "Paradise Lost", in which the 'paradise within' is the central theme rather than national legitimization, "Midnight's Children" also proposes new ways of viewing the former imperial national self-representation and its constituting texts.XXX
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Shabangu, Mohammad. "In search of the comprador: self-exoticisation in selected texts from the South Asian and Middle Eastern diasporas." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1017770.
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This thesis is concerned with transnational literature and writers of the Middle Eastern and South Asian diasporas. It argues that the diasporic position of the authors enables their roles as comprador subjects. The thesis maintains that the figure of the comprador is always acted upon by its ontological predisposition, so that diasporic positionality often involves a single subject which straddles and speaks from two or more different subject positions. Comprador authors can be said to be co-opted by Western metropolitan publishing companies who stand to benefit by marketing the apparent marginality of the homelands about which these authors write. The thesis therefore proceeds from the notion that such a diasporic position is the paradoxical condition of the transnational subject or writer. I submit that there is, to some degree, a questionable element in the common political and cultural suggestions that emerge upon closer evaluation of diasporic literature. Indeed, a charge of complicity has been levelled against authors who write, apparently, to service two distinct entities – the wish to speak on behalf of a minority collective, as well as the imperial ‘centre’ which is the intended interlocutor of the comprador author. However, it is this difference, the implied otherness or marginality of the outsider within, which I argue is sometimes used by diasporic writers as a way of articulating with ‘authenticity’ the cultures and politics of their erstwhile localities. This thesis is concerned, therefore, with the representation of ‘the East’ in four novels by diasporic, specifically comprador writers, namely Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia, and Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. I suggest that the ‘third-world’ and transnational literature can also be a selling point for the transnational subject, whose representations may at times pander to preconceived ideas about ‘the Orient’ and its people. As an illustration of this double-bind, I offer a close reading of all the novels to suggest that on the one hand, the comprador author writes within the paradigm of the ‘writing back’ movement, as a counter-discourse to the Orientalist representations of the homeland. However, the corollary is that such an attempt to ‘write back’, in a sense, re-inscribes the very discourse it wishes to subvert, especially because the literature is aimed at a ‘Western’ audience. Moreover, the template of the comprador could be used to explain how a transnational post-9/11 text from an Afghan-American, for instance, may be put to the service of the imperial machine, and read, therefore, as a supporting document to the U.S. policy on Afghanistan.
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Wang, Yung-Fu, and 王詠馥. "Narrative Anxiety in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children." Thesis, 2015. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/rmfs3y.
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碩士國立交通大學
外國語文學系外國文學與語言學碩士班
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Saleem Sinai, the protagonist as well as the narrator of Midnight’s Children, is trapped by an unusual condition; that is, writing is the only way for him to feel alive; whereas it simultaneously accelerates his journey heading to death. In this sense, this novel represents the tension between the eager of substantiating one’s existence and the necessity of resisting the threat of death. Curious about how Saleem copes with his anxiety resulted from such contradiction, I will anatomize the relationship between the act of writing and the construction of Saleem’s subjectivity to analyze the significance of anxiety. Taking Ferdinand de Saussure’s semiology as the point of departure, in the first part the thesis I disclose the challenges Saleem has to face under the circumstance of relying on the language system as the medium to represent his memory. And later on I will use Jacques Derrida’s différance, in addition to the narrative errors Saleem deliberately creates in the novel, to uncover the positive connection between the signifier and the signified so as to prove that the act of writing indeed to do with the construction of subjectivity. Moreover, Saleem’s anxiety does not merely occur at the level of writing but also exists in the textual complexity. In the second part, we probe into Saleem’s confrontation with history and fantasy through the examination of his relationship with his alter-ego, Shiva, and his wife Parvati-the-witch respectively. Either physically or mentally, both of them challenge Saleem’s resolution of completing his narrative, revealing the hero’s predicament of reconstructing his subjectivity according to his will. Nevertheless, through the analysis of this thesis, the reader would find that, as the bearer caring the loss of existence, Saleem uses the imperfect to perfect the real human condition, demonstrating the quality of fluidity in the formation of subjectivity. Hence, the feeling of anxiety in Midnight’s Children, even if only functions expediently, indicates the vitality of our existence. We cannot stay away from the torture in the coming-into-being, apparently, but we can turn such affliction into the fuel of life, allowing it pushing us to move forward to achieve integrity.
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Chen, Jhao-liang, and 陳昭良. "Playing with History: Historiography and Grotesque Realism in Salman Rushdie''s Midnight's Children." Thesis, 2009. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/96312889775230523467.
Full textAbstract:
碩士國立中正大學
外國文學所
97
This thesis explores Salman Rushdie’s playful historiography and grotesque realism Midnight’s Children. Chapter One examines Rushdie’s playful historiography in terms of Hindu worldviews, mythological allusions, and Rushdie’s own remarks in interviews. The historiographical structure in Midnight’s Children is uniquely excessive in content and circular in time. In the novel, Rushdie plays with the idea of history by focusing on the dubious nature of memory, time, and historical events. Chapter Two discusses how bodies in Midnight’s Children are well inscribed with cultural and historical conflicts—they are sites where Rushdie’s unique visions of history are illuminated. A Bakhtinian reading of those grotesque body images highlights Rushdie’s playful historiography in terms of protruding/expanding body parts, open body orifices, excrement images and uncrowned kings. With all these images of grotesque realism supporting his visions of history, Rushdie playfully annihilates the narrative and meaning of grand “History.” Midnight’s Children thus serves as an alternative rewriting of Indian history; the novel supplements and problematizes the official history in a playful way.
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Wu, You-Chen, and 吳宥辰. "Recurrence of Post-Colonialism? : A Comparison of Two Chinese Translations of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children." Thesis, 2014. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/96829f.
Full textAbstract:
碩士長榮大學
翻譯學系碩士班
102
This study aims to examine whether eqivalent effect in translating cultural words and concoct English is achieved in both Zhang Ding-qi’s traditional Chinese and Liu Kai-fang’s simplified Chinese translation of Midnight’s Children. Methodologically, this study is divided into two parts. First, two Chinese version’s translation strategies for translating cultural words are classified into three categories and analyzed. Second, concoct English languages in both Chinese translations are also classified into three groups and analyzed. Homi Bhabha’s hybridity theory and Balachandra Rajan’s concoct English strategy are both adopted as a theoretical framework to analyze the hybrid languages in post-colonial literature. Both Bhabha and Rajan’s theories target mostly on post-colonialism in India. Their studies center on how Indian writers promote the anti-colonial ideology by writing English novels. The study examines what writing strategies are used in presenting anti-colonialism in Midnight’s Children, and how the Chinese translators do to reconstruct the ideology in their Chinese translations. Two results are concluded after all cultural words and concoct English under study are comprehensively analyzed. First, free translation is widely applied in both traditional and simplified Chinese version of Midnight’s Children, while transliteration is applied on translating deity’s names in both Chinese translations. According to the statistics from this study, traditional Chinese translations of cultural words and concoct English are more successful than those of the simplified counterpart in presenting post-colonial ideology. Second, concoct English is not rendered properly in both Chinese translations due to the different structures between English and Chinese. To sum up, traditional translation is more successful than simplified translation in translating the languages of anti-colonialism in Midnight’s Children. It is sincerely hoped that this study can offer practical insights into post-colonial translation studies.
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Sibert, Bianca. "Seeking the magic in our reality : a critical study of magical realism and the work of Salman Rushdie and Alexis Wright." Thesis, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/940822.
Full textAbstract:
Bachelor Honours - Bachelor of Arts (Honours)Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria is a unique piece of Indigenous Australian literature. Several critics have noted its narrative style as an example of ‘magical realism’. Since the text shares certain characteristics with other novels regarded as magical realist, such as Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, this label seems befitting of Wright’s prose. However, analysis into the origins and development of ‘magical realism’, along with a close reading of these texts focussing on form and content to determine the significance of the presence of the real and magical within their work, reveals the term’s inadequacy in describing Carpentaria. A ‘maban reality’, as defined by Mudrooroo Narogin, is found to be a more accurate label for Wright’s particular techniques and purposes, and thus a case-by-case approach is advocated for the study of future works.
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"Postcolonial counter discourse in historical novel writing: the construction of historical representation and cultural identity in One hundred years of solitude, Midnight's children and Flying carpet." 2002. http://library.cuhk.edu.hk/record=b5896036.
Full textAbstract:
Ng Chui-yin, Christine.Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 148-156).
Abstracts in English and Chinese.
Abstract --- p.i
Acknowledgement --- p.vi
Contents --- p.vii
"Introduction: History, Fiction, and Narrative" --- p.1
History and Narrative in Traditional Historical Narrative --- p.4
A Rethinking of the Relationship between History and Narrative --- p.6
Historical Narrative in a Postcolonial Context --- p.21
Historical Novel Writing and Postcolonial Counter Discourse --- p.26
Chapter Chapter One: --- Resistance to Solitude: Garcia Marquez's Vision of a New World in One Hundred Years of Solitude
Imperial Historical Narratives and Latin America --- p.35
Magical Realism and Historical Representation of Latin America --- p.44
"Solitude, Family History and the Problem of Identity" --- p.59
Conclusion --- p.71
Chapter Chapter Two: --- Midnight's Children and Hybridity
Imperial Historical Narratives and India --- p.74
Metafictional Writing and Historical Novel Writing --- p.80
Hybridity of Indian Cultural Identity --- p.91
Conclusion --- p.101
Chapter Chapter Three: --- Non-resistance to National Historical Narratives: Xi Xi's Flying Carpet
"British Colonial Narratives, Chinese National Narratives and Hong Kong" --- p.102
Fairy-tale Realism and an Alternative Historical Representation --- p.112
The Representation of the HongkongnesśؤHeterogeneity and All-inclusiveness --- p.119
Conclusion --- p.129
Conclusion: Postcolonial Counter Discourse in Historical Novel Writing --- p.131
Notes --- p.141
Work Cited --- p.148
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Delhoum, Iris Elsa Ambre. "L'humour littéraire : le fond tragique dans Zazie dans le métro, Midnight's Children et Crèvematin : étude du mouvement humoristique et de son rapport au tragique dans la littérature." Thèse, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/1866/21983.
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Regel, Jody Lorraine. "Nation-building novels : symbolism and syncrecity." Thesis, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/10413/5972.
Full textAbstract:
Nation-building novels are novels which attempt to weave the experiences, values and richness of a variety of cultures, language groups and social contexts into a national heritage that creates a sense ofnational identity and identification for all people within a particular nation-state. This dissertation explores how Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie, Keri
Hulme's The Bone People and Margaret Laurence's The Diviners all use the particularly illuminating metaphor of family to explore nation-building in India, New Zealand and Canada respectively. In questioning traditional definitions of family through the image of the adopted child (or changeling in the case of Midnight's Children), the novels also explore new ways of understanding "belonging" and the "other". Since the meaning of these terms is rooted in the past, these novels also question the "truth" of the past by exposing the fallibility of memory. In chapter one a working definition of "nation" and "nation-building" is given and the vision, purpose and characteristic features of nation-building novels are discussed.
Chapter two focuses on Rushdie's novel in which the metaphor of pickling is used to explore history not as a collection of hard facts but as a conglomeration of subjective, sensuous, manufactured and carefully created and preserved flavours. In chapter three Hulme's novel is discussed, particularly in relation to what is "other" and the importance of names. The narrator's idea of "commensalism" is explored as an ideal
of syncrecity which does not deny individual identity. Chapter four looks at the development from consolation to contradiction to construction in the development of a hybrid national identity in Laurence's novel. Chapter five looks at the narrative techniques used in order to convey the prophetic
nature of the novels' message and discusses the importance of the intertexts of each novel. Chapter six focuses on belonging as it looks at the return of each narrator to her/his symbolic or literal home. The chapter also discusses how the novels attack linearity by separating "time" and "space" (instances of social interaction) from "place" (specific geographical locations) in order to "disembed" their message to emphasise its universal
applicability.Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1998.
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Hung, Shu-Ying, and 洪書瑛. "Dharma/Adharma in the Satire of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children." Thesis, 2011. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/23931041415294265118.
Full textAbstract:
碩士靜宜大學
英國語文學系
99
Thesis Title: Dharma/Adharma in the Satire of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children Graduate Program of the Department of English Language, Literature and Linguistics, Providence University 99th School Year An Abstract of a Thesis for the Degree of Master of Arts Graduate: Ally Shu-Ying Hung Advisor: Prof. Patricia Haseltine, Ph. D. Key words: Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children, satire, Hinduism, dharma, adharma Abstract This thesis reads the problem of Hindu dharma/adharma in twentieth-century India as addressed in the satire of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. Rushdie’s juxtaposition of the past and the present embodies a multiplicity of social-political phenomena that bring up the conflict between modernity and the traditional mores associated with Hindu dharma. In Hindu tradition, dharma means the omnipresent law that sustains the order and welfare of God’s creation; however, in post-independent India the traditional Brahman concepts of self-identity are threatened by the effects of modernity. The incongruity of self-identity echoes in adharma through people’s non-performance or deviations from their caste obligations. The situations of adharma in this novel undermine the desirability of dharma and even criticize the continuation of Hindu traditions in twentieth-century India. Thereby, the satire of Midnight’s Children leads readers into a perception of social transitions and a struggle for self-identity, and present Rushdie’s gloomy outlook on the future of the traditional Hindu values in the modern India. Chapter One discusses the autobiographic narration of Saleem Sinai in which the unreliability and fragmentation not only construct a hybridization of Indian history, Hindu mythology, and Rushdie’s memory of homeland, but also make the novel a twentieth-century fictional satire revealing the problem of maintaining Hindu dharmic principles and values in post-independent India. Chapter Two focuses on the analysis of satirical conventions in terms of Saleem’s distortion of history and his disposal of reality. It explores the relationship between caste dharma and the conception of self-identity in contrast to the instances of adharma in the novel. Chapter Three investigates the female struggles with the rules of dharma and proper womanhood in domesticity, marriage, and motherhood; the presentation of adharma thereby highlights women’s importance and value for preserving Indian traditions in twentieth-century India. Chapter Four analyzes the situations of adharma in male characters’ divergence from the traditional Hindu conception of family relationship; in particular, how Rushdie deals with the mother-son relationships and satirizes the political scheme of the State of the Emergency carried out by the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her son. In conclusion, through the approach of satire the Hindu dharma is questioned by its desirability of maintaining the order in the post-independent Indian society on the issues of overpopulation, property, religious conflicts and language differences.
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Wang, Elizabeth, and 王玉玲. "Midnight''s Children: Voices from the Other." Thesis, 1996. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/18101253033781224455.
Full textAbstract:
碩士淡江大學
西洋語文研究所
84
The mutedness of history is an experience commonly shared by post-colonialsocieties. As a post-colonial writer,Rushdie is surely aware of this crisis which results in the confusion of identity and therefore tries to find possible solutions to solve this predicament. In his view, re-writing the past is a progressive and possible way to get out of this impasse. Employing the form of fiction, he strives to inscribe India''s history through Midnight''s Children so as to make the novel as another version of history and simultaneously to make it as the voice of post-colonialIndia articulating fromthe locus of "self" rather than that of "other." Regarding the post-colonial societies'' crisis of identity, this thesis attempts to scrutinize how the muted voices of the colonized are articulated in the form of a novel rather than that of history. CHAPTER II of this thesiswill proceed to illustrate Rushdie''s problemitization and subversion of the Western view of history. It will be shown in this chapter that Rushdie reveals the textuality and narrativity of history by investigating history''s constructing process. CHAPTER III will focus on the novel''s representation ofthe post-colonial India''s cultural and social conditions including its features of assimilation to the western culture, its fragmentation and hybridity, its resistance to the former colonizer''s cultural imperialism and it s historical petrifcation among others.
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Hung-ChunYang and 楊宏群. "Rewriting Histories: A Postmodern Fragmentation of India in Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children." Thesis, 2010. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/48802667419212099964.
Full textAbstract:
碩士國立成功大學
外國語文學系專班
98
Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children can be seen as the juxtaposition and combination of Indian fragmentary histories and an ex-centric character’s (Saleen Sinai) fragmentary memoir and autobiography. Simulating the reality, the novel utilizes plenty of monologues to express the ideas of Saleem Sinai, the protagonist. This novel opens with the depiction as the fairy tale and reminds us of the narrative of One Thousand Nights and A Night with surrealistic imagination. But, the subversion of multiple concepts reveals that its main target is to project the author’s own ideology. In this novel, Rushdie’s skepticism toward history and universality and complicated presentation of history of the Indian subcontinent happens to correspond to Linda Hutcheon’s historiographic metafiction, the most ideal form of postmodernist fiction. Basically, this work overwhelms the traditional recognition and spotlight of the Indian subcontinent. Based on the above, this thesis explores how Rushdie converges history, fiction, and criticism of fiction within one fictional text and furthermore, blurs their boundaries by constructing the verisimilitude between the fictional worlds and the realities referred. It means that Midnight’s Children guides the double interrogations, because Rushdie molds the sense of authentication in fictional texts whereas manifests the falsification in historical documents. Thus, he interlaces diverse facts from history while developing Saleem’s autobiography. Paradoxically, his content displays a more realistic world than historical records. Besides his peculiar writing style of history, the mixture of Western and Eastern cultures, the changeable identities, and the mutual exchange of dominance between males and females, highlights a postmodern impulse toward hybridization.
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Chen, Wei Kuang, and 陳瑋光. "Chutnification of History and Pickling of Time: Bodily Reinscription in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children." Thesis, 2012. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/55818391111439808527.
Full textAbstract:
碩士國立暨南國際大學
外國語文學系
100
This thesis explores the alternative historiography of modern Indian history in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. The protagonist Saleem’s chutnification of history and pickling of time become a philosophy of history in which the alternative genealogy challenges not only official history but also the myth of origin. Chapter one develops the notion of history in genealogical framework in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, especially through the perspective of the protagonist Saleem Sinai. The construction of alternative genealogy suggests historical disparity buried under the master narrative of national documentations and exposes the fictionality of the myth of origin. The point of alternative genealogy is to explore the discordant nature of time in narrative, and therefore to reach the effects of interrogating historical truth and uncovering possible ways of interpretation of history at the same time. Chapter two explores the relation between body and history, and supposes that the body serves as the inscribed surface of history. When the body is deformed under historical violence and becomes grotesque, it shows the image of India’s pathological history and reflects the grotesque realities of the larger body of community with physical diseases. The supposition looks for the symbolic signification on the grotesque body outside linguistic construction and examines how the grotesque body becomes the prime agent of the interactive process between individual body and public history.
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Chen, Chun-yen, and 陳春燕. "The Postcolonial Fiction: Midnight''s Children and the Problematic of Nationness in the Postcolonial Condition." Thesis, 1996. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/83454805025286431868.
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Toste, Andrea de Fraga Pires. "The Margins Write the Empire Down How identity and Language in Rushdie´s Midnight´s Children and Kureishi´s The Buddha of Suburbia Subvert Britain´s Cultural Hegemony." Master's thesis, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10362/66780.
Full textAbstract:
Ao longo da presente dissertação analisamos, com base em conceitos e na metodologia dos Estudos Pós-Coloniais, de que forma o conceito de identidade e o questionar de metanarrativas (como história ou nação) permitem contradizer os supostos valores e princípios da hegemonia cultural britânica nos romances Midnight`s Children (1981), de Salman Rushdie, e The Buddha of Suburbia (1990), de Hanif Kureishi. Ambos os romances, representativos da ficção pós-colonial e pós-moderna britânica, são escolhidos para demonstrar como o conceito de identidade e como estratégias narrativas, como o humor, o realismo mágico ou a fantasia, são usadas para subverter expectativas e criticar leituras únicas de universos culturais como o britânico. Ambos desafiam quer as expetativas de encontrar a defesa de uma etnia/cultura, quer a demonização ou culpabilização de uma outra cultura, permitindo questionar leituras etnocêntricas e perspetivas estabelecidas.Based on Post-Colonial concepts and methodology, this dissertation analyzes how the concept of identity and the questioning of metanarratives (such as history or nation) allows for the contradiction of the (supposed) values and principles of British cultural hegemony in Midnight`s Children (1981), by Salman Rushdie, and The Buddha of Suburbia (1990), by Hanif Kureishi. These two novels, which are representative of British post-colonialism and postmodernism, are chosen in order to demonstrate how their depiction of identity and how narrative strategies like humour magical realism or fantasy are used to subvert expectations and criticize single interpretations of cultural universes like the British one. Both novels defy the reader`s expectations of finding the defence of one ethnicity/culture as opposed to the demonization or culpability of another which allows the questioning of established perspectives