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

This thesis aims at examining the complex narrative mode of self-reflexivity, ascertaining how it serves the postcolonial agenda of destabilizing the power of Eurocentric literary discourse, the discourse that marginalized literary traditions of subject peoples. Derived from ancient literary traditions, self-reflexive narrative asserts the cultural identity of colonized societies. In particular, this thesis focuses on three self- reflexive novels from the Indian subcontinent: R. K. Narayan's The Guide, Taslima Nasrin's Lajja, and Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. The self-reflexive techniques employed in each of these narratives vary a great deal. Narayan's The Guide is modeled on various ancient patterns of storytelling and on mythic traditions. Nasrin's Lajja uses a distinctive technique of mixing non-literary registers with literary to resist the ruling culture in Bangladesh, and to represent the ruled. Rushdie's Midnight's Children seems to combine the strengths of the other two narratives in the service of its decolonizing agenda. Like The Guide, it makes ample use of ancient storytelling techniques to validate indigenous discourses. And like Lajja, it makes ample use of historical and cultural events in India's history to interrogate many colonialist assumptions in discursive practices. All these novels employ a self-reflexive narrative mode as a counter-discursive strategy that resists totalizing colonialist literature and reconnects with their obscured literary past.