Sociological Concepts in Literature

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that postcolonial literature, such as Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children", deals with transculturation and the incredible and complicated processes, which lead to hybridity of the colonizing and the colonized cultures. The author points out that Arundhati Roy's "The God of Small Things" and Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Books" both represent the deeply rooted differences between the cultures of the West and the East. The paper also looks at Brian Friel's "Translations", Tsitsi Dangarembga's "Nervous Conditions" and Achmat Dangor's "Bitter Fruit" to illustrate that cultural translation is a potent metaphor for the way in which one civilization may try to interpret another through its own terms.

Table of Contents:
Transculturation and Hybridity: Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children"
Orientalism: Arundhati Roy's "The God of Small Things" and Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Books"
Cultural Translation

From the Paper:

"Not accidentally, in "Midnight's Children", Saleem revises his own ancestry along with the historical past. The stories of his grandfather Aziz, a young doctor who is educated in Britain and thus already a hybrid himself, are very relevant at this point. Thus, his love story with Naseem is very interesting because it tokens the conflicting cultural attitudes between the Indian and the British cultures. While the Western civilization requires and allows a thorough physical examination of the body before establishing a diagnosis in case of an illness, the Oriental culture denies the propriety of this direct contact between a young man and a young woman outside marriage."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Dangarembga, Tsitsi. Nervous Conditions. Seattle: Seal Press, 1988.
• Dangor, Achmat. Bitter Fruit. New York: Atlantic Books, 2002.
• Kipling, Rudyard. The Jungle Books. New York: Penguin Books, 1975.
• Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things. New York: Harper Perennial, 1998.
• Rushdie, Salman. Midnight's Children. New York: Vintage, 2006.

More papers on Sociological Concepts in Literature:

• Research Paper # 63849 : "Childhood in the South"
• Term Paper # 7058 : "Classic and Historic Concepts"
• Analytical Essay # 72282 : "Reincarnation: A Discussion Of Context And Meaning"

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