The aim of this dissertation is to trace the function of parody in the context of Salman Rushdie&rsquo / s magical realistic fiction. The magical realism of Rushdie&rsquo / s fiction presents a complex Third World experience which constitutes an alternative to, and challenges the Eurocentrism of western culture. The form and content of Rushdie&rsquo / s novels are so intense and rich that the whole body of his work comes to the fore, not as an outcome of the two clashing civilisations, that is East and West, but rather as an immense medley of the two cultures. While &ldquo / writing back to the empire&rdquo / , Rushdie draws on innumerable sources ranging from such grand narratives as Genesis, Iliad, Ramayana, A Thousand and One Nights, Hindu, Persian, Greek, and Norse mythologies, and local cultural traditions, to modern politics mingling fiction and reality in a broad historical perspective, so that his work becomes a synthesis of East and West, an international aesthetic plane where diversities express themselves freely. The dissertation focuses particularly on Rushdie&rsquo / s Midnight&rsquo / s Children, The Moor&rsquo / s Last Sigh,and Shalimar The Clown. / it contains an introductory chapter, a theory chapter, including two subchapters, a development chapter with three subchapters which analyse the above mentioned three novels, and a conclusion chapter. The introductory chapter presents an overview of the issues to be investigated in the subsequent chapters. The theory chapter deals with the concepts of colonialism, nationalism, and the past and the present of postcolonial literary theory with reference to its leading theorists, such as M. Foucault, E. Said, H. Bhabha, and other recent critics / this chapter also introduces magical realism by reference to a number of current definitions and approaches. The following three subchapters, which focus on the analyses of the three novels, explore how parody functions both thematically and structurally in relation to Rushdie&rsquo / s magical realism. The concluding chapter demonstrates that Rushdie&rsquo / s work creates an unrestrained plane of an international culture where multiple visions and diversities can find a room to assert themselves.

Mild psychological effects, such as sleep-deprivation, on an oppressed and tortured human being can be characterized as “normal”. However, Shame by Salman Rushdie uses magical realist style to describe the psychological effects of shame in a patriarchal society which is based on capitalistic class values. This essay will focus on the Marxist feminist reading of the novel with a psychoanalytical perspective which is going to help analyse the effects of the oppressed female characters, Bilquis Hyder, Sufiya Zinobia and Rani Harappa.  The essay focuses on different incidents in the lives of these characters with the help of critics such as Aijaz Ahmad and Timothy Brennan. Both have written critically about Rushdie. This essay will discuss the different aspects of Marxism, feminism as well as psychoanalysis and connecting them to the novel, which would give the answers as to what shame can do to a person’s psyche. The Beauty and the Beast fairy-tale gets a different perception in this story, as Sufiya Zinobia is both the characters in one.

This dissertation explores the porous boundaries between Salman Rushdie's fiction and the various manifestations of the filmic vision, especially in Midnight's Children, The Satanic Verses, and other selected Rushdie texts. My focus includes a chapter on Midnight's Children, in which I analyze the cinematic qualities of the novel's form, content, and structure. In this chapter I formulate a theory of the post-colonial novel which notes the hybridization of Rushdie's fiction, which process reflects a fragmentation and hybridization in Indian culture. I show how Rushdie's book is unique in its use of the novelization of film. I also argue that Rushdie is a narrative trickster. In my second chapter I analyze the controversial The Satanic Verses. My focus is the vast web of allusions to the film and television industries in the novel. I examine the way Rushdie tropes the "spiritual vision" in cinematic terms, thus shedding new light on the controversy involving the religious aspects of the novel which placed Rushdie on the most renowned hit-list of modern times. I also explore the phenomenon of the dream as a kind of interior cinematic experience. My last chapter explores several other instances in Rushdie's works that are influenced by a filmic vision, with specific examples from Haroun and the Sea of Stories, "The Firebird's Nest," and numerous other articles, interviews, and essays involving Rushdie. In my conclusion I discuss some of the emerging similarities between film and the novel, born out of the relatively recent technology of video cassette recorders and players, and I examine the democratizing effects of this relatively new way of seeing.

The aim of this dissertation is to study postmodern historical novels, which are labeled &ldquo / historiographic metafictions&rdquo / (Hutcheon 1989: 92), in terms of their allowing for different voices and alternative, plural histories by subverting the historical documents and events that they refer to. The study analyzes texts from feminist and postcolonial literature, Jeanette Winterson&rsquo / s The Passion and Sexing the Cherry, and Salman Rushdie&rsquo / s Midnight&rsquo / s Children and Shame as examples in which the transgression of boundaries between fact and fiction is achieved. Basing its arguments on postmodern understanding of history, the thesis puts forward that historiography not only represents past events but it also gives meaning to them, as it is a signifying system, and turns historical events into historical facts. Historiography, while constructing historical facts, singles out certain past events while omitting others, for ideological reasons. This inevitably leads to the fact that marginalized groups are denied an official voice by hegemonic ideologies. Therefore, history is regarded as monologic, representing the dominant discourse. The thesis will analyze four novels by Winterson and Rushdie as double-voiced discourses where the dominant voice of history is refracted through subversion and gives way to other voices that have been suppressed. While analyzing the novels themselves, the thesis will look for the metafictional elements of the texts, stressing self-reflexivity, non-linear narrative, and parodic intention to pinpoint the refraction and the co-existence of plural voices. As a result, historiographic metafiction is proved to be a liberating genre, for feminist and postcolonial writers, that enables other histories to be verbalized.

魯西迪的《魔鬼詩篇》深入探討後現代千變萬化的世界中，離散社群自我定位、痛苦折磨、適應及抗拒的生活經驗。不可思議的故事，訴說著蛻變、脫軌及位置錯亂。故事描述離散主體痛苦經歷的困境，包含惡劣的生活居住環境、對故國家園的懷舊、以及企圖歸化殖民母國的矛盾情結。除此之外，故事亦涉及離散主體如何挪用及顛覆帝國中心僵硬、死板、堅不可摧的傳統。以離散主體的身份認同作為論述的根本基石，本論文主要由三個方面探討《魔鬼詩篇》中的離散社群：〈一〉瞬息萬變、反覆無常的後現代世界中，離散主體的生活經驗。〈二〉不可避免的揉雜狀態。〈三〉離散社群挪用異質空間。 第二章分為兩個部份：後現代狀態及漂泊離散。此章旨在解釋後現代性宣示一無所適從、無所寄託的新時代來臨，其顯著特色為斷裂性、不穩定性、易變性。此外，此章亦探討離散主體的經驗以及其面臨的認同危機。第三章闡述揉雜狀態之不可避免以及其崩解西方權威的潛能。文化揉雜強調不同文化間存在著不可翻譯性，因此，文化揉雜超越僵硬、堅不可摧的二元性，突顯非此亦非彼的可能性。同樣地，跨界過程中產生的語言揉雜也是應強調的重點。第四章由兩個面向探討《魔鬼詩篇》中的空間概念：空間的異質性以及離散主體的空間挪用。空間的不確定及易變本質和離散主體的能動性相當有關，藉由祕密的計謀以及游擊戰式的攻擊，離散主體得以改變空間的形塑，找到自我的空間並創造獨特的空間故事。透過這三個面向，本論文揭櫫離散主體的能動性，其利用不穩定的狀態開創無盡的可能性。 / An astounding novel revolving around metamorphosis, aberration, and dislocation, The Satanic Verses goes deep into the diasporic experience of self-positioning, torment, adaptation, and resistance in a kaleidoscopic and contingent postmodern world. It sharply delineates the predicaments pungently experienced by diasporic subjects, including the adverse residential environment, diaspora’s nostalgic attempt to grasp the distant past of homeland, and the ambivalent yearning to transform themselves “from the sojourners to settlers” (Barker 204). Besides, the text deals with how diasporic subjects appropriate and subvert the established norms of the imperial center. In consequence, the complicated issue of the diasporic identity turns out to be the underlying cornerstone in this thesis. The major concern of this thesis is to explore the entire novel principally from three angles: the diasporic experience in a world of disintegration and mutability, hybridity as an inevitable phenomenon, and the diasporic appropriation of the heterogeneous space. Chapter II is divided into two parts: the postmodern and diaspora. This chapter aims not only to explain that transience and fragmentation—the salient features of postmodernity—usher in a new age without foundation but also to explore the diasporic experience and the identity crisis confronted by diasporic subjects in the postmodern era. In Chapter III, the ineluctable phenomenon of hybridity and its latent capability to dismantle the authority of the West are meticulously scrutinized. Underscoring the untranslatability among diverse cultures, cultural hybridity transcends the inflexibility, stubbornness, and impenetrability of an either-or situation and brings to light the possibilities of a neither-nor situation. By the same token, the power of linguistic hybridity—a phenomenon taking place in the process of trans-territorial crossing—is also highlighted in The Satanic Verses. In Chapter IV, the concept of space in The Satanic Verses is meticulously investigated from two aspects: the heterogeneous nature of space and spatial appropriation by diasporic subjects. The indeterminate, mutable, discontinuous, and heterogeneous nature of space is closely related to the agency of diasporic subjects. With underground tactics and guerilla attack, diasporic subjects are able to alter the configuration of space, to search out their own space, and to create their own spatial stories. By means of delving into these three aspects, this thesis explores the agency of diasporic subjects to take advantage of their unsteady position and to open up endless possibilities.

Magister Legum - LLM / This mini-thesis is based on the presumption that the Danish cartoons and the anti-Muslim clip posted on YouTube as forms of expression, ridiculed the religious beliefs and practices of Muslims which in turn affected the exercise of religious freedom as it violated the dignity of the bearers of the right to freedom of religion and therefore a conflict between the right to freedom of religion and freedom of expression exists. The above incidence of conflict between the right to freedom of religion and freedom of expression involves infringing the freedom of religion of the Islamic community. Blasphemy in Islam is speech that is insulting to God, but during the course of Muslim history it has become increasingly linked with insult to the Prophet Muhammad. In Islam the depiction of the Prophet Muhammad in any way is strictly forbidden and is considered blasphemous.

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In my earlier work, ‘First steps towards a rhetorical hermeneutics of literary interpretation’ (2006), I argued that academic reading takes the form of an argument between readers. Four serious weaknesses in that account are its elision of the distinction between reading and discourse on reading, its inattention to non-academic reading, its exclusive focus on ‘interpretation’ as if this constituted the whole of reading or of discourse on reading, and its failure to theorise the object of literary reading, ie. the work of literature. The current work aims to address all of these problems, together with those created by certain other approaches to literary reading, with the overall objective of clearing the ground for more empirical studies. It exemplifies its points with examples drawn primarily from non-academic public discourse on literature (newspapers, magazines, and the internet), though also from other sources (such as reading groups and undergraduate literature seminars). It takes a particular (though not an exclusive) interest in two specific instances of non-academic reception: the widespread reception of Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses as an attack on Islam, and the minority reception of Peter Jackson’s film trilogy The Lord of the Rings as a narrative of homosexual desire. The first chapter of this dissertation critically surveys the fields of reception study and discourse analysis, and in particular the crossover between them. It finds more productive engagement with the textuality of response in media reception study than in literary reception study. It argues that the application of discourse analysis to reception data serves to problematise, rather than to facilitate, reception study, but it also emphasises the problematic nature of discourse analysis itself. Each of the three subsequent chapters considers a different complex of problems. The first is the literary work, and its relation to its producers and its consumers: Chapter 2 takes the form of a discourse upon the notions of ‘speech act’ and ‘authorial intention’ in relation to literature, carries out an analysis of early public responses to The Satanic Verses, and puts in a word for non-readers by way of a conclusion. The second is the private experience of reading, and its paradoxical status as an object of public representation: Chapter 3 analyses representations of private responses to The Lord of The Rings film trilogy, and concludes with the argument that, though these representations cannot be identical with private responses, they are cannot be extricated from them, either. The third is the impossibility of distinguishing rhetoric from cognition in the telling of stories about reading: Chapter 4 argues that, though anecdotal or autobiographical accounts of reading cannot be taken at face value, they can be taken both as attempts to persuade and as attempts to understand; it concludes with an analysis of a magazine article that tells a number of stories about reading The Satanic Verses – amongst other things. Each of these chapters focuses on non-academic reading as represented in written text, but broadens this focus through consideration of examples drawn from spoken discourse on reading (including in the liminal academic space of the undergraduate classroom). The last chapter mulls over the relationship between reading and discourse of reading, and hesitates over whether to wrap or tear this dissertation’s arguments up.