상세정보

What are the links between fiction, cultural identity, and history? Myths of the Nation explores the ideological framework underlying the historical fiction that has been written in the context of Indian nationalism. It prepares the ground for the `easy interchangeability' between fiction and history that occurs in the construction of identity. It raises questions related to the writing of history as a site for an ideological encounter between the colonizer and the colonized. In Myths of the Nation, the author allows us a speculative insight into the reasons why fiction is relevant to any question of India's pre-Independence history.

Myths of the Nation focuses on the construction of forms of historical consciousness in narratives, or schools of narrative. The study seeks to underscore what goes behind the writing of `true' and `authentic' histories by treating historical fiction as the literary dimension of nationalist ideology. It traces nationalism from its abstract underpinnings to its concrete manifestation in historical fiction which underwrites the Indian freedom struggle. The construction of identity through mythicized conceptions of India is examined in detail through Raja Rao's first novel, Kanthapura. The key concept governing the subject is that of representation. Since the `fictional reality' of the nation is a much debated issue, the study examines how history slides into fiction. The author shows how orientalist, nationalist, Marxist, subalternists, and poststructuralists, have all, in their own celebratory ways, used the disenfranchised sub-proletariat in their works. What she finds useful in poststructuralist practices, however, is that subaltern identities are imbued with heterogeneity, thus splitting open an authoritarian and reactionary nationalism, and a continuing neo-colonialism.

정보제공 :

Introduction: Narratives of Nationalism and the Politics of the OrientPart One1. The Nativization of English2. The Ideology of Gandhi: A Mass FantasyPart Two3. Peasant Uprisings and Fictional Strategies4. Contesting Identities: Involvement and Resistance of WomenPart Three5. The Future of a Vision6. Fixity and ResistanceBibliography