gained its independence from the colonial rule, his life story goes hand in hand with that of the nation. Saleem blends his life with the political life of his country, claiming: “I had been mysteriously handcuffed to history, my destinies indissolubly chained to those of my country”. This so-called significance of his birth gives the opportunity to Saleem to comment on the political and historical events in the Indian past. Because Saleem is, as he claims, handcuffed to history by his accidental birth, his autobiography reflects not only his individual life story but also the entire history of postcolonial India. This is the reason for the presence of historical personages and events in the novel that are referred to along with the life story …show more content…
If one considers “the Chinese box structure” that Hutcheon puts forward in Narcissistic Narrative as one of the fundamental elements of metafictional novels it is observed that Saleem, a fictional character himself, composes his autobiography which consists of equally fictional elements that he makes up to appropriate the past events into his version, hence acting the role of a novelist. He is the narrator in the novel but at the same time a writer of his autobiography, and throughout his narration he continually reminds the reader of the fictional nature of the story he is telling by means of his self-reflexive remarks. And the inclusion of historical novels and personages in the novel’s metafictional context implies their fictionality and problematizes them as well. Furthermore, the role of the reader in a metafictional context, as Hutcheon argues, is no longer of a passive receiver, but that of an active participant in the writing process: “The reader’s task becomes increasingly difficult and demanding, as he sorts out the various narrative threads. The universe he thus creates, he must then acknowledge as fictional and of his own making”. MCH as a metafictional novel, with parodic and ironic intentions, demands of the reader to fill in certain gaps in the novel. Saleem points out his inefficiency as a writer, so he
D'hoker, Elke, and Gunther Martens, eds. Narrative unreliability in the twentieth-century first-person novel. Vol. 14. Walter de Gruyter, 2008.
Magill, Frank N., John Steinback, Micllichap, Joseph R., ed. Critical, Survery of Long Fiction: English
I frankly confess that I have, as a general thing, but little enjoyment of it, and that it has never seemed to me to be, as it were, a first-rate literary form. . . . But it is apt to spoil two good things – a story and a moral, a meaning and a form; and the taste for it is responsible for a large part of the forcible-feeding writing that has been inflicted upon the world. The only cases in whi...
When reading we often harness particular threads of thought or lenses of critique to gain entry into the implied historic or legendary nature of literature. To accurately process a tale in the light in which it is presented, one must consider the text from multiple viewpoints. Taking into consideration the psychological circumstances of the presenter/author/narrator, we can get a view into how our personal experiences can create bias in interpretation. By placing the elements of the story into the web of relationships used to interpret the external world, we bring a view of the text from the external perspective. All of these factors are at play in the relations between the perspective within a text, creating a form of reality with its own historic and mythic properties. Characters have their own histories and structures, expressed or not, and their perception in the fictional world they reside exerts influence outward to the reader of literature. This influence can create a sense of immersive reality that renders the reading experience to be mythic truth, based in facts but not emotion or direct perception, a somewhat distanced portrayal of events. However it can also be an expression of perceptive truth, events are experienced much they would be in real life – confusing and disjointed. To look into these problems of perspective, I will use examples from “The Red Convertible” by Lois Erdrich to demonstrate how Lyman’s narration style is representative of psychoanalytic concepts, showing how he deals with the situations presented in his life.
Studies in Modern Fiction. 11.2 (1969): 47-55. Rpt. In Short Story Criticism. Vol. 4. Ed. Thomas Votteler. Detroit: Gale, 1990. 356-358. Print.
The novel can be viewed as a religious, biblical, or a psychological allegory. This essay helps support the idea of the novel being a psychological
fiction piece. Many analysts have even claimed that the work’s narrator is a direct reflection of
Comparing the Role of the Narrator in Melville’s Benito Cereno, Henry James’ Daisy Miller and Hwang’s M. Butterfly
On Narrative and Narratives: II. New York: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994-98. 503-26. Print. Vol. 3 of New York Literary History. 11 vols.
The main characteristic of the new literary form of the novel according to Ian Watt is "truth to individual experience" (4) and its new shape is created by a focus on the individual character. He is presented in a specific definition of time and space. The second section of this paper will show how far this is realized in both of the novels. In the third section I want to analyze the characters' individualism in connection with the claim to truth and their complexity in description.
During the March 1986 edition of the Journal of Modern Literature, Lee Clark Mitchell of Princeton University opens his article “‘Keeping His Head’: Repetition and Responsibility in London’s ‘To Build a Fire’” by critiquing naturalism’s style of storytelling. Mitchell claims naturalism as a slow, dull, and plain way of capturing an audience; and Jack London is the epitome of this description. Mitchell states, “[London’s] very methods of composition prompt a certain skepticism; the speed with which he wrote, his suspiciously childish plots…have all convinced readers to ignore the technical aspects of h...
As with many great novels, there is usually more to the story than what is written on paper. Each author, in his novels, incorporated his critical view of the world into the story by using the theme of individual vs. society. These views portray their cultures in the negative light in which they saw them. Therefore, the criticisms were the authorsÕ way of exhibiting and lashing out against what, in their minds, were the evils within the society they lived in. These problems range from politics, to religion, to the human condition.
Of the many literary conventions used to describe JM Coetzee's Foe, one of the more commonly written about is metafiction. Since about 1970, the term metafiction has been used widely to discuss works of post-modern fiction and has been the source of heated debate on whether its employ marks the death or the rebirth of the novel. A dominant theme in post-modern fiction, the term "metafiction" has been defined by literary critics in multiple ways. John Barth offers perhaps the most simplified definition: metafiction is "a novel that imitates a novel rather than the real world." Patricia Waugh extends our understanding to add that it is "fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to itself as an artifact to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality." According to these definitions, metafiction concerns itself not with the creation of a new narra...
McConnell, Frank. The Modern Novel in America, Regnery, revised edition,1963, pg. 814. Rpt. In World Literature Criticism.
Carlisle, Janice. “The Mirror In the Mill on the Floss; Toward Reading of Autobiography Discourse”. Studies in the Literary Imagination. Vol 23:Issue 2. [EBSCO] Masterfile Premier 1990