Intertextuality and Parodic Reworking of Representation in Salman Rushdie’s Novels Midnight’s Children (MCH) and Shame (SH)
[1]
Béchir Chaabane, Preparatory Institute for Engineering Studies of Sfax, Sfax, Tunisia.
The selected works, Salman Rushdie’s novels Midnight’s Children (MCH) [1] and Shame (SH) [2], share some common features. All of them are postmodern narratives which are generally highly intertextual and labeled “Historiographic Metafiction” (Hutcheon 1989, 92) [3]. So, the intensive use of intertexts, both on literary and historical levels, makes these historiographic metafictional novels very subversive. Intertextuality is not deployed as a simplistic pastiche, but an imitation of previous documents with critical distance and often with an ironic dimension. By means of parodying previous literary texts and subverting the historical documents and events which they refer to, these intertexts allow different voices and alternative plural histories to gain ground. These novels are exemplary texts in which the transgression of boundaries between fact and fiction is achieved. During the process of constructing historical facts, traditional historiography tries to single out certain past events while omitting others for ideological purposes. This will inextricably lead to the oppression and exclusion of marginalized groups and minorities that are prevented from official voice by hegemonic ideology. This is due to the fact that history is considered as monologic, representing only the dominant discourse. Therefore, the aim of this intertextual study of these novels, based on postmodern theories, is to pinpoint the intertextual elements to prove that the author’ texts are subversive in both ways: in terms of their problematization of the boundaries between history and fiction and their questioning of the monology of the official discourse which claims the objectivity of historical representation. Thus, intertextuality gains a liberating force and opens the dominant discourse of history to multivocality. With the writers’ emphasis on history as a human construct, the intertextual investigation of these novels will be conducted in terms of their use of different voices and alternative histories.
Intertextuality, Parody, Postmodernity, Postmodernism, Metafiction, Historiographic Metafiction
[1]
Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children. London: Vintage, 1995.
[2]
Rushdie, Salman, Shame. London: Vintage, 1983.
[3]
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[4]
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[5]
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[6]
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[7]
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[8]
Hutcheon, Linda: Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox. London: Routledge, 1980.
[9]
Hutcheon, Linda, Theory of Parody. London: Routledge, 1985.
[10]
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[11]
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[12]
Rushdie, Salman. “The empire Writes Back with a Vengeance.” The Times.(Quoted in Aschcroft 33).
[13]
Reder, Michael. “Rewriting History and Identity: The Reinvention of Myth, Epic, and Allegory in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children” in Booker. pp: 225-254.
[14]
Gorra, Michael. “This Angrezi in which I am Forced to Write: On the Language of Midnight’s Children,” in Booker. pp: 188- 204.
[15]
Booker, M. Keith (ed.). Critical Essays on Salman Rushdie. New York: G. K. Hall Co., 1999. pp: 1-15.
[16]
Booker, M. Keith, “Midnight’s Children, History and Complexity: Reading Rushdie after The Cold War” in Booker, 1999. pp: 283-314.
