Folk Songs as Socio-Political Cultural Resistance in Shakespeare's the Tempest and Abu Ishaque's Surya-Dighal Bari (The Ominous House): Reimagining Roots

Using a textual and contextual close reading of representative folk songs from William Shakespeare The Tempest and Abu Ishaque’s Surya-Dighal Bari (The Ominous House), this study explore the consideration of folk song as instruments of socio-political cultural resistance; highlights that oral textual traditions do not merely reflect the hegemonic discourses, but actually challenge and resist them, giving voice to those peripheral communities who otherwise would have been marginalized even further by dominant power structures. This project concerns the socio-political dimensions of folk traditions on both works, as they mirror colonialism and post-colonial history. Moreover, the study presents a comparative perspective on how both of the authors reinterpret their cultural heritage via folk motifs; ultimately affirming the idea that folk culture has universal significance as an identity-retaining source, serving anti-colonial functions well beyond specific traditions or literary and geographical focuses. Through these elements, the research study brings out an understanding of folk traditions in literature as providing resistant narrative strategies to hegemonic discourse.