DOCSLIB.ORG

THE QUESTION of CULTURAL IDENTITY in V. S. NAIPAUL's MIGUEL STREET, HALF a LIFE, and MAGIC SEEDS 2021 Phd THESIS ENGLISH LANG

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
THE QUESTION of CULTURAL IDENTITY in V. S. NAIPAUL's MIGUEL STREET, HALF a LIFE, and MAGIC SEEDS 2021 Phd THESIS ENGLISH LANG THE QUESTION OF CULTURAL IDENTITY IN V. S. NAIPAUL’S MIGUEL STREET, HALF A LIFE, AND MAGIC SEEDS 2021 PhD THESIS ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE M. Zafer AYAR Supervisor Prof. Dr. A. Serdar ÖZTÜRK i THE QUESTION OF CULTURAL IDENTITY IN V. S. NAIPAUL’S MIGUEL STREET, HALF A LIFE, AND MAGIC SEEDS M. Zafer AYAR T.C Karabuk University Institute of Graduate Programs Department of English Language and Literature Prepared as PhD Thesis Prof. Dr. A. Serdar ÖZTÜRK KARABUK June 2021 ii TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS .................................................................................................... 1 DECLARATION ................................................................................................................ 3 FOREWORD ...................................................................................................................... 4 ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ 5 ÖZ (ABSTRACT IN TURKISH) ....................................................................................... 6 ARCHIVE RECORD INFORMATION ............................................................................ 7 ARŞİV KAYIT BİLGİLERİ (in Turkish) .......................................................................... 8 ABBREVIATIONS ............................................................................................................ 9 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................ 10 CHAPTER ONE: DISCOURSE IN POSTCOLONIAL PERIOD ................................... 21 1.1. Transition from Colonial to Postcolonial Period ....................................................... 21 1.2. Neocolonialism .......................................................................................................... 26 1.3. Commonwealth and Postcolonial Literatures ............................................................ 28 1.4. Cultural Identity in Postcolonial Era ......................................................................... 33 1.5. V. S. Naipaul and Postcoloniality .............................................................................. 40 CHAPTER TWO: RELOCATION OF CULTURAL IDENTITY IN MIGUEL STREET .......................................................................................................................................... 44 2.1. Miguel Street: Relocation of Cultural Identity through Hybridity and Mimicry ...... 44 2.2. Miguel Street: Relocating Cultural Identity through Mimicry .................................. 58 CHAPTER THREE .......................................................................................................... 68 3.1. Identity Crisis Related to Unhomeliness, Ambivalent Dislocation, and Sense of Belonging in Half a Life ................................................................................................... 68 3.2. Unhomeliness in Half a Life: Identity Crisis Related to Multi-Dislocation .............. 72 3.3. Ambivalent Dislocation and the Sense of Belonging in Half A Life ........................ 86 CHAPTER FOUR ............................................................................................................. 97 4.1. Third Space and Discovery of Self-identity in Magic Seeds .................................... 97 4.2. Finding One’s Roots: Willie’s Quest for Identity in the Indian Root ...................... 103 4.3. A Way of Seeing: Perception vs Idealism in the Sense of Third-Space Identity .... 107 4.4. Willie’s Third Space and His Coming into Being ................................................... 117 4.5. Prison as a Shaping Force for Willie’s Identity ....................................................... 124 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................... 130 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................... 141 CURRICULUM VITAE ................................................................................................. 151 1 THESIS APPROVAL PAGE I certify that in my opinion the thesis submitted by M. Zafer AYAR titled “THE QUESTION OF CULTURAL IDENTITY IN V. S. NAIPAUL’S MIGUEL STREET, HALF A LIFE, AND MAGIC SEEDS” is fully adequate in scope and in quality as a thesis for the degree of PhD. Prof. Dr. A. Serdar ÖZTÜRK .......................... Thesis Advisor, Department of English Language and Literature This thesis is accepted by the examining committee with a unanimous vote in the Department of English Language and Literature as a PhD thesis. July 14, 2021 Examining Committee Members (Institutions) Signature Chairman: Prof. Dr. A. Serdar ÖZTÜRK (KBU) ......................... Member: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sinan YILMAZ (KBU) .......................... Member: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Harith TURKİ (KBU) .......................... Member: Assist. Prof. Dr. Yıldırım ÖZSEVGEÇ (RTEU) .......................... Member: Assist. Prof. Dr. Fehmi TURGUT (KTU) .......................... The degree of PhD by the thesis submitted is approved by the Administrative Board of the Institute of Graduate Programs at Karabuk University. Prof. Dr. Hasan SOLMAZ .......................... Director of the Institute of Graduate Programs 2 DECLARATION I hereby declare that this thesis is the result of my own work, and all the information included has been obtained and expounded in accordance with the academic rules and ethical policy specified by the institute. Besides, I declare that all the statements, results, and materials not original to this thesis have been cited and referenced literally. Without being bound by a particular time, I accept all moral and legal consequences of any detection contrary to the aforementioned statement. Name & Surname: M. Zafer AYAR Signature 3 FOREWORD This dissertation explores the question of cultural identity during colonial and postcolonial periods in the selected works of V. S. Naipaul. Identity became a prominent issue, particularly during the period of decolonization. It was a period when the conscious of cultural identity commenced to be the primary issue for the subjugated people living in or out of their own countries. Following World War II, this trendy topic was commonplace in the works of men of letters and originally belongs to the Third World nations and nationalities. This dissertation has demanded much time and energy to be completed. During the research and writing processes, my supervisor Prof. Dr. A. Serdar Öztürk helped me enormously; he has given me insight into the core arguments and contributed profoundly to the discussions. Without his help, this dissertation would not come fruition. I would also like to express my gratitude to Prof. Dr. A. Serdar ÖZTÜRK, the head of the department of English Language and Literature at Karabuk University, for his continuous support and help. Finally, I would like to thank my family for their endless support and patience. I am hereby humbled by their attention and the time they have chosen to allocate to this presentation. M. Zafer AYAR Karabuk, 2021 4 ABSTRACT It has always been difficult to give a new pace to culture and cultural identity for those leaving the lands they were born in. Although culture and cultural values along with cultural identity are dynamic facts, there is generally an instinctual demand for the original culture. When the Third World countries were exposed to colonial oppression, they went through a long process of cultural transformation. Many colonized countries came face to face with new cultural dictations imposed on them by the colonizing ideology. Although the situation varies from generation to generation, subjugated citizens, enslaved indentured workers, and displaced elites always longed for their authentic culture and cultural identities. This transformation, of course, did not take place overnight. Indeed, it was a centuries-long process for the colonizer countries to implement such debilitating measure in the cultural, political, and social sense. Therefore, it is not an issue for the Third World subjects to work to reverse the situation in their own favor. As of the mid-20th century when the decolonization gained a fast momentum, many critics, especially those directly linked to subjugated cultures, dealt with the issue of cultural values. One of the forerunner critic of this trend was Homi Bhabha whose criticism in the cultural sense is still accepted in the literary circles. If it is the topic related to ‘cultural identity’ it is unavoidable to associate Bhabha’s The Location of Culture with that of other world-famous critics such as Edward Said, Stuart Hall, Gayatri Spivak and many others. In other words, he has always been in interaction with all the other postcolonial critics of the postcolonial period. In tandem with the question of cultural identity, this dissertation intends to tackle this issue from the perspective of Bhabha’s a number of critical terms such as “hybridity,” “mimicry,” “ambivalence,” “unhomeliness,” “third space,” and so on and so forth. All the aforementioned critical terms will be applied to V. S. Naipaul’s Miguel Street, Half a Life and Magic Seeds with a motivation to clarify the condition of postcolonial cultural identity in postcolonial era. Keywords: cultural identity, decolonization, hybridity, unhomeliness, mimicry, third space 5 ÖZ (ABSTRACT IN TURKISH) Doğdukları toprakları terk eden
Load more

Recommended publications
  • A Psychological Study in James Joyce's Dubliners and VS
    International Conference on Shifting Paradigms in Subaltern Literature A Psychological Study in James Joyce’s Dubliners and V. S. Naipaul’s Milguel Street: A Comparative Study Dr.M.Subbiah OPEN ACCESS Director / Professor of English, BSET, Bangalore Volume : 6 James Joyce and [V]idiadhar [S] Urajprasad Naipaul are two great expatriate writers of modern times. Expatriate experience provides Special Issue : 1 creative urges to produce works of art of great power to these writers. A comparison of James Joyce and V.S. Naipaul identifies Month : September striking similarities as well as difference in perspective through the organization of narrative, the perception of individual and collective Year: 2018 Endeavour. James Joyce and V.S. Naipaul are concerned with the lives of ISSN: 2320-2645 mankind. In all their works, they write about the same thing, Joyce write great works such as Dubliners, an early part of great work, Impact Factor: 4.110 and Finnegans Wake, in which he returns to the matter of Dubliners. Similarly, Naipaul has written so many works but in his Miguel Citation: Street, he anticipated the latest autobiographical sketch Magic Seeds Subbiah, M. “A returns to the matter of Miguel Street an autobiographical fiction Psychological Study in about the life of the writer and his society. James Joyce’s Dubliners James Joyce and V.S. Naipaul are, by their own confession, and V.S.Naipaul’s committed to the people they write about. They are committed to the Milguel Street: A emergence of a new society free from external intrusion. Joyce wrote Comparative Study.” many stories defending the artistic integrity of Dubliners.
    [Show full text]
  • A Study of Place in the Novels of VS Naipaul
    A University of Sussex DPhil thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details Towards a New Geographical Consciousness: A Study of Place in the Novels of V. S. Naipaul and J. M. Coetzee Thesis submitted by Taraneh Borbor for the qualification of Doctor of Philosophy in English literature The University of Sussex September 2010 1 In the Name of God 2 I declare that the work in this thesis was carried out in accordance with the regulations of the University of Sussex. The work is original except where indicated by special reference in the text and no part of the thesis has been submitted for any other degree. The thesis has not been presented to any other university for examination either in the United Kingdom or overseas. Signature: 3 ABSTRACT Focusing on approaches to place in selected novels by J. M. Coetzee and V. S. Naipaul, this thesis explores how postcolonial literature can be read as contributing to the reimagining of decolonised, decentred or multi-centred geographies. I will examine the ways in which selected novels by Naipaul and Coetzee engage with the sense of displacement and marginalization generated by imperial mappings of the colonial space.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction
    I INTRODUCTION The objective of the thesis has been to explore the rootlessness in the major fictional works of V.S. Naipaul, the-Trinidad-born English author. The emphasis has been on the analysis of his writings, in which he has depicted the images of home, family and association. Inevitably, in this research work on V.S. Naipaul’s fiction, multiculturalism, homelessness (home away from home) and cultural hybridity has been explored. Naipaul has lost his roots no doubt, but he writes for his homeland. He is an expatriate author. He gives vent to his struggle to cope with the loss of tradition and makes efforts to cling to the reassurance of a homeland. Thepresent work captures the nuances of the afore-said reality. A writer of Indian origin writing in English seems to have an object, that is his and her imagination has to be there for his/her mother country. At the core of diaspora literature, the idea of the nation-state is a living reality. The diaspora literature, however, focuses on cultural states that are defined by immigration counters and stamps on one’s passport. The diaspora community in world literature is quite complex. It has shown a great mobility and adaptability as it has often been involved in a double act of migration from India to West Indies and Africa to Europe or America on account of social and political resources. Writers like Salman Rushdie, RohingtonMistry, Bahrain Mukherjee, and V.S. Naipaul write from their own experience of hanging in limbo between two identities: non-Indian and Indian.
    [Show full text]
  • VS Naipaul's Fiction, 1954-71
    Y fAR THtS WGRE CONFEW?ED/A NN~D'CIBTENTION OE CE GRADE 1979 Permission ,is hereby granted to the FlATVONAL LIBRARY OF L'aut~isationesf, per la prgsente, accordge 9 la BIBLIOTH&- CANADA to Wdilm this mesis and to +xi or selt copies QUE ATI ION^€ 4L/ CANADA de micrdilmer cette lheje -et of the fifrn. & pr€ter w de vendre des exemplaires du film. T The autha rezwves other pub1 icatiorr rights, ad mitt# the L'mteur se rgserve les aurres dtoits de publication; n? la d , thesis nor extutsive ex.tr;#:ts fran it may be print& or other- tMseni de longs ertra'T;s de cellcci ne doivent dtre imprim& f wise zep&ucd wi-ut tJw author's witten Fssim, . w aurrement reproduits sans l'autarisation &rite de I'autew. ..,- .--,+.. >= - . .+ 'A-. AVlS The quality af this miaufkb is Mlydepencknt la qualit4 de ame microfiche depernd gandement de upn the quality of the original thesis submitted for la qualit8 .de la tMe soumise au microfil~.Nous microfilming Every effort has been made to ensure avons tout fait pour assurer une qualit6 sup6riieure the highest quality of reproduction posible. de reproduction. ff pages we missing, contact the unbedy which S'il manque des pa~ps, veuillez communiqusr gran~edthe degree. avec I'univenit6 qui a cxwrf&B le grade. * Some pages may hate indistinct print especially La qualit4 d'impression 'de certaines pages peut if the afiginal pages ware typed with a pcnw typewriter laisser 4 Wrer, surtout si leo paps originales ont 6t4 ribbon w if tfse on-wersity sent us a poor photv.
    [Show full text]
  • Miguel Street V
    V.S. NAIPAUL Miguel Street V. S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932. He went to England on a scholarship in 1950. After four years at Oxford he began to write, and since then he has followed no other profession. He is the author of more than twenty books of fiction and nonfiction and the recipient of numerous honors, including the Nobel Prize in 2001, the Booker Prize in 1971, and a knighthood for services to literature in 1990. He lives in Wiltshire, England. ALSO BY V. S. NAIPAUL NONFICTION Between Father and Son: Family Letters Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples India: A Million Mutinies Now A Turn in the South Finding the Center Among the Believers The Return of Eva Perón (with The Killings in Trinidad) India: A Wounded Civilization The Overcrowded Barracoon The Loss of El Dorado An Area of Darkness The Middle Passage FICTION Half a Life A Way in the World The Enigma of Arrival A Bend in the River Guerrillas In a Free State A Flag on the Island* The Mimic Men Mr. Stone and the Knights Companion* A House for Mr. Biswas The Suffrage of Elvira* The Mystic Masseur * Published in an omnibus edition entitled The Nightwatchman’s Occurrence Book FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, JUNE 2002 Copyright © 1959, copyright renewed 1987 by V. S. Naipaul All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by André Deutsch Limited, London, in 1959.
    [Show full text]
  • Calypso Allusions in Naipaul's Miguel Street
    Kunapipi Volume 3 Issue 2 Article 5 1981 Calypso allusions in Naipaul's Miguel Street John Thieme Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Thieme, John, Calypso allusions in Naipaul's Miguel Street, Kunapipi, 3(2), 1981. Available at:https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol3/iss2/5 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] Calypso allusions in Naipaul's Miguel Street Abstract V .S. Naipaul's detached and often disdainful attitude to emergent societies has made him many enemies in the Third World . and his portrayal of the black man is particularly problematic since it involves a level of aloofness and scorn not to be found even in his comments on the 'wounded civilization' of India and the 'overcrowded barracoon' of Mauritius. Black West Indians are largely missing from Naipaul's early fiction and when they do appear, in the form of characters like the black M.L.C. whose monocle falls in his soup at the Governor's dinner in The Mystic Masseur (1957) or Miss Blackie, the Tulsis' faithful retainer in A House for Mr Biswas (1961), they are usually caricatured. In his more recent novels black characters figure more prominently, but are generally held at arm's length. This journal article is available in Kunapipi: https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol3/iss2/5 JOHN THIEME Calypso Allusions in Naipaul's Miguel Street The lessons and the poems they write and send from England Impress me they were trying to cultivate coritedians.
    [Show full text]
  • IDENTITY and HOME in THREE CARIBBEAN AUTHORS By
    IDENTITY AND HOME IN THREE CARIBBEAN AUTHORS By HARBHAJAN S. HIRA Bachelor of Science Guru Nanak Dev University Amritsar, Punjab (India) 1974 Master of Arts in English Hamburg University Hamburg, Germany 1987 Master of Arts in English California State University, Stanislaus Turlock, California 2001 Master of Arts in Education California State University, Dominguez Hills Carson, California 2007 Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate College of the Oklahoma State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY July, 2020 IDENTITY AND HOME IN THREE CARIBBEAN AUTHORS Dissertation Approved: Dr. Timothy Murphy Dissertation Adviser Dr. Katherine Hallemeier Dr. Martin Wallen Dr. Alyson Greiner ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Several persons have helped making this project successful. My thanks go to Dr. Katherine Hallemeier, who provided feedback with an unprecedented speed in the final weeks of writing. Thanks are due to Professor Emeritus Martin Wallen as well. In spite of his retirement in 2019, Dr. Wallen kindly agreed to stay on the committee and help me get across the finish line. I also enormously benefited from his course on species, race, and surveillance, where I first discussed theorists such as Du Bois and Fanon. I want to thank Dr. Alyson Greiner of Geography too, who provided all the support that can be expected of an outside committee member. A big THANK YOU goes to Dr. Timothy Murphy, however. As my advisor and chair of the committee, he has been instrumental in securing the success of the project. He meticulously read and commented on every single chapter over the past year and a half.
    [Show full text]
  • Locating VS Naipaul
    V.S. Naipaul Homelessness and Exiled Identity Roshan Cader 12461997 Supervisors: Professor Dirk Klopper and Dr. Ashraf Jamal November 2008 Thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (English) at the University of Stellenbosch Declaration I, Roshan Cader, hereby declare that the work contained in this research assignment/thesis is my own original work and that I have not previously in its entirety or in part submitted it at any university for a degree. Signature:……………………….. Date:…………………………….. 2 Abstract Thinking through notions of homelessness and exile, this study aims to explore how V.S. Naipaul engages with questions of the construction of self and the world after empire, as represented in four key texts: The Mimic Men, A Bend in the River, The Enigma of Arrival and A Way in the World. These texts not only map the mobility of the writer traversing vast geographical and cultural terrains as a testament to his nomadic existence, but also follow the writer’s experimentation with the novel genre. Drawing on postcolonial theory, modernist literary poetics, and aspects of critical and postmodern theory, this study illuminates the position of the migrant figure in a liminal space, a space that unsettles the authorising claims of Enlightenment thought and disrupts teleological narrative structures and coherent, homogenous constructions of the self. What emerges is the contiguity of the postcolonial, the modern and the modernist subject. This study engages with the concepts of “double consciousness” and “entanglements” to foreground the complex web and often conflicting temporalities, discourses and cultural assemblages affecting postcolonial subjectivities and unsettling narratives of origin and authenticity.
    [Show full text]
  • Naipaul – Colonial and Post Colonial Alike
    I.Boldea, C. Sigmirean, D.-M.Buda THE CHALLENGES OF COMMUNICATION. Contexts and Strategies in the World of Globalism NAIPAUL – COLONIAL AND POST COLONIAL ALIKE Adina-Maria Paicu Lecturer, PhD, ”Constantin Brâncuși” University of Târgu-Jiu Abstract:This paper deals with Naipaul‟s position in the context of post-colonial theory, considering him as a member of the Indian diaspora Ŕ two approaches leading to a discussion of his Indianness. After a bio-biographical introduction to Naipaul (the man and his work) a first step would be to determine those elements in Naipaul‟s writings which allow us to consider him from the point of view of his belonging to the post-colonial literature in general, and to the Indian diasporic writing, in particular. A second step would be to establish the relationship between the biographical and autobiographical elements in Naipaul‟s travelogues, with a special stress on his Indian heritage: to what extent does Naipaul‟s Indianness inform his fiction and non-fiction? What triggers the numerous adverse reactions to some of his writings (such as his comments on Islam and the Muslim world, or even on India? What justifies an unfavourable response such as Derek Walkott‟s? Is Naipaul‟s decision to stop writing fully motivated and acceptable? Keywords:VS Naipaul, Indianness, Post-Colonial Literature, Biography and Autobiography, Indian Heritage Date: 2001, December 7. Location: Stockholm, Sweden. Event: Nobel Award ceremony. Awardee: Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (See Fig, 1). It was on this date and at this particular location that Naipaul delivered Two Worlds Ŕ his now famous Nobel acceptance speech Ŕ to the distinguished guests of the Swedish Academy.
    [Show full text]
  • V.S. Naipaul's Half a Life, Magic Seeds and Globalisation1
    V.S. Naipaul’s Half a life, Magic seeds and globalisation1 Robert Balfour School of Languages, Literacies, Media & Drama Education University of KwaZulu-Natal DURBAN E-mail: [email protected] Abstract V.S. Naipaul’s Half a life, Magic seeds and globalisation Naipaul’s work has been described as an examination of “the clash between belief and unbelief, the unravelling of the British Empire, the migration of peoples” (Donadio, 2005). Contro- versial both in terms of his perceptions of postcolonial nations (Said, 1978) and of postcolonial literary criticism (King, 1993), Naipaul, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001, at an earlier point declared the novel dead and postcolonial nations half-baked. Despite his provocative pronouncements and his readers’ criticisms (the most stringent and extensive critique by Nixon (1992)), Naipaul is too important to be marginalised. While major contemporaries have ceased to be productive (Walcott, Ondaatje, Soyinka) Naipaul’s voice continues to be heard, his tones new, his perspective flexible enough to apprehend new phenomena in culture and politics, and his critique sufficiently disturbing to merit critical attention. Despite accusations of being a postcolonial lackey, a reactionary, a racist, and a misogynist, he has survived, and not only because of his elegant prose. My purpose in this article is to explore his 21st century writing as a critical understanding of the postcolonial phenomenon of globalisation as a cultural and economic force which is a development and consequence of imperialism and decolo- nisation. I shall argue that as a phenomenon, globalisation 1 I am grateful for the thoughtful and thorough comments made by the reviewers of this article to bring greater clarity and purpose to my writing.
    [Show full text]
  • A Study of VS Naipaul's Miguel Street, Ernest Gain
    Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2012 Short story cycles of the Americas, a transitional post-colonial form: a study of V.S. Naipaul's Miguel Street, Ernest Gaines's Bloodline, and Garbriel Garcia Marquez's Los Funerales de Mama Grande Benjamin Sands Yves Forkner Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the Comparative Literature Commons Recommended Citation Forkner, Benjamin Sands Yves, "Short story cycles of the Americas, a transitional post-colonial form: a study of V.S. Naipaul's Miguel Street, Ernest Gaines's Bloodline, and Garbriel Garcia Marquez's Los Funerales de Mama Grande" (2012). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 2191. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/2191 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. SHORT STORY CYCLES OF THE AMERICAS, A TRANSITIONAL POST-COLONIAL FORM: A STUDY OF V.S. NAIPAUL’S MIGUEL STREET, ERNEST GAINES’S BLOODLINE, AND GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ’S LOS FUNERALES DE MAMA GRANDE A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College In partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Interdepartmental Program in Comparative Literature by Benjamin Forkner License, Université d’Angers, France, 2000 Maîtrise, Université d’Angers, France, 2003 M.A., Louisiana State University, 2004 August 2012 For Valentina Dela Forkner ii Acknowledgments First and foremost, I would like to thank Dr.
    [Show full text]
  • Dooley 1 1 Naipaul's 'Fraudulent' London Novel: Mr Stone and The
    Dooley 1 Naipaul’s ‘Fraudulent’ London Novel: Mr Stone and the Knights Companion1 Gillian Dooley, Flinders University Between A House for Mr Biswas (1961) and The Mimic Men (1967) V.S. Naipaul produced a novel which is less well-known than either. Critical attention has been lavished on these two novels, and justly so, but the differences in style and subject matter of Mr Stone and the Knights Companion (1963) account for a large disparity in the treatment of this novel by critics. A search in the Modern Languages Association Bibliography for critical articles on The Mimic Men, for example, produces forty-one results, whereas a corresponding search for articles about Mr Stone and the Knights Companion produces only five.2 Mr Stone is a short, spare novel with a rich vein of melancholic comedy. Unlike The Mimic Men, it contains little philosophical rumination for a critic to dissect. Another reason for its lack of critical attention could be that it deals, superficially at least, with subjects unlike those Naipaul has treated either before or since. Mr Biswas and the three novels leading up to it were set in Trinidad. The Mimic Men was set partly in London but the main action takes place in the Caribbean. But Mr Stone is set entirely in England and all the characters are English. There is no obvious ‘post-colonial’ angle to engage the many critics who tend to concentrate on political and historical, rather than formal and stylistic, dimensions in their study of Naipaul’s work. And the point of view in this novel is detached and none of the characters can easily be identified with the author: Naipaul himself was concerned that by obscuring his presence as narrator in the novel he betrayed or belied his origins and situation.
    [Show full text]