불완전한 진실, 구성되는 현실로서의 역사 보여주기: 살만 루시디의 『자정의 아이들』 (Revisioning History in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 영미문학연구회
· 수록지 정보 : 영미문학연구 / 15호 / 57 ~ 85페이지
· 저자명 : 성정혜

초록

In Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, the main character, Saleem Sinai, depicts the history of his family and himself. With a desire to leave a fully grasped history after his death, Saleem writes and tells his past to his partner and pickle factory co-worker, Padma, who is illiterate. Saleem yearns to record all he saw and heard so as to explain how meaningful his life was and to position himself in the center of history. To achieve this end, in Midnight’s Children, Saleem intentionally focuses on what happened to his body and how closely this physical experience is connected with the official history of India. Thus, this paper first examines how Saleem imposes authenticity on his story by focusing on his physical shape and how he closely connects national history with his personal experience through the technique of magic realism. This paper, however, goes further to argue that while Saleem has a desire to build up a pure and comprehensive history, his storytelling method helps readers to realize that Saleem’s history-building is only a myth as same as what the nationalists did when they constructed newly-born India’s identity. In conclusion, one pure history rendered in wholly integrated narrative cannot be achieved because Saleem’s representation of the past inevitably contains the process of recalling and retelling the story.

영어초록

In Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, the main character, Saleem Sinai, depicts the history of his family and himself. With a desire to leave a fully grasped history after his death, Saleem writes and tells his past to his partner and pickle factory co-worker, Padma, who is illiterate. Saleem yearns to record all he saw and heard so as to explain how meaningful his life was and to position himself in the center of history. To achieve this end, in Midnight’s Children, Saleem intentionally focuses on what happened to his body and how closely this physical experience is connected with the official history of India. Thus, this paper first examines how Saleem imposes authenticity on his story by focusing on his physical shape and how he closely connects national history with his personal experience through the technique of magic realism. This paper, however, goes further to argue that while Saleem has a desire to build up a pure and comprehensive history, his storytelling method helps readers to realize that Saleem’s history-building is only a myth as same as what the nationalists did when they constructed newly-born India’s identity. In conclusion, one pure history rendered in wholly integrated narrative cannot be achieved because Saleem’s representation of the past inevitably contains the process of recalling and retelling the story.

참고자료

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