Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:32:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2006-12-14Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:21:21Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 camargo_lmc_dr_arafcl.pdf: 4212129 bytes, checksum: 50fa4f58f8d18fc6016ee1ed375a6bc2 (MD5) / Este estudo apresenta uma análise da obra The God of Small Things, da escritora indiana Arundhati Roy (1961), na qual ficção e episódios históricos, relativos às conseqüências da colonização inglesa na Índia, mesclam-se em um espaço e tempo míticos, favorecendo uma análise baseada na Teoria da Narrativa Poética, conforme a formulação de Jean-Yves Tadié (1978). Com esse enfoque, são examinados vários aspectos ligados à narrativa como personagem, narrador, espaço, tempo, mito, estrutura e estilo, buscando compreender as vozes lírica e social da obra, que ecoam em seu universo híbrido, composto de elementos da cultura oriental e da ocidental. / This dissertation presents an analysis of the book written by the Indian writer Arundhaty Roy (1961), entitled The God of Small Things, in which, fiction and historical facts related to the consequences of the British colonization in India are brought together in a mythical setting that favors an analysis based on the theory of the lyrical novel, as presented by Jean-Yves Tadié (1978). With this approach, aspects related to the narrative genre, such as, character, narrator, setting, myth, structure and style are explored in order to reveal the lyrical and social voices that eco in its hybrid universe that mingles eastern and western cultural traits.

This project investigates various ways in which resistance is explored by Kamala Das, Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Arundhati Roy in My Story, Vidheyan, and The God of Small Things respec-tively. “Liminal Resistances: Local Subjections in My Story, Vidheyan, and The God of Small Things” aims to examine the workings and creative subversions of hegemonic discourses of caste, class, gender and color within the local milieu of Kerala, India. By exploring the theoreti-cal apparatuses employed in three diverse texts set in Kerala, this project identifies: firstly, Das’s subversion of Nair Kerala’s sense of gendered and casted normativity in My Story; secondly, Adoor’s depiction of the notion of home that enables self-recognition between the exploited and tyrant ensuring both suppression and libratory self-formation for classed subjects in Vidheyan; and finally, Roy’s portrayal of the conceptual category of whiteness within Kerala as being nei-ther uniformly subservient nor stable as depicted in The God of Small Things. It is hoped that by identifying and exploring the theoretical nuances of resistances in these generically diverse texts—autobiography, film, and fiction-- all set within the local realms of Kerala, this project will contribute a new scholarship in postcolonial studies that will recognize and problematize local instances of subversions and their representations within the Indian subcontinent.

No romance O Deus das Pequenas Coisas (1997) de Arundhati Roy, as transgressões são atitudes que se configuram como abundantes na narrativa, sendo realizadas em sua maioria pelos personagens marginalizados. A fim de obter uma compreensão mais profunda das razões que impulsionam tanto a narrativa quanto os personagens a cometer estas infrações, elas foram divididas em três níveis neste trabalho: pós-colonial, sociopolítico e afetivo. São aqui analisadas as transgressões dos personagens Velutha, Ammu, Estha, Rahel e Sophie. Os níveis das transgressões, suas motivações e os conceitos de trauma individual e cultural são colocados em contraponto para aprofundar a análise da narrativa do romance. No nível pós- colonial, são empregados conceitos de Panikkar (1969), Festino (2007), Forter (2014) e Outka (2011), enquanto Sztompka (2000, 2004), Alexander (2000) e Joseph (2010) permeiam o nível sociopolítico, finalizando o nível afetivo com Caruth (1995), Bose (1998) e Almeida (2002). A hipótese deste trabalho é de que Roy foca nas transgressões para, em primeiro lugar, criticar determinados elementos da sociedade indiana, e para provocar reações em seus leitores. Esta é sustentada através da citação de seus ensaios e discursos na análise do romance. / In The God of Small Things (1997), from Arundhati Roy, the transgressions are substantial throughout the narrative, as the majority of them are performed by marginalized characters. In order to comprehend more deeply the reasons which propel the narrative and the characters to such violations, they were divided into three levels in this work: post-colonial, socio-political and affective. The transgressions analyzed here are the ones performed by the characters Velutha, Ammu, Estha, Rahel and Sophie. The levels of the transgressions, their motivations and the concepts of individual and cultural trauma are all correlated so that the intentions of the narrative are elucidated. In the post-colonial level, the concepts of Panikkar (1969), Festino (2007), Forter (2014) and Outka (2011) are applied, whereas Sztompka (2000, 2004), Alexander (2000) and Joseph (2010) are used for the socio-political level; the affective level is observed with notions from Caruth (1995), Bose (1998) and Almeida (2002). The hypothesis of this work is that Roy focuses on the transgressions of minor characters not only to criticize particular elements from the Indian society but also to trigger the reaction of the readers. This is supported by her essays and speeches quoted along the analysis of the novel.

No romance O Deus das Pequenas Coisas (1997) de Arundhati Roy, as transgressões são atitudes que se configuram como abundantes na narrativa, sendo realizadas em sua maioria pelos personagens marginalizados. A fim de obter uma compreensão mais profunda das razões que impulsionam tanto a narrativa quanto os personagens a cometer estas infrações, elas foram divididas em três níveis neste trabalho: pós-colonial, sociopolítico e afetivo. São aqui analisadas as transgressões dos personagens Velutha, Ammu, Estha, Rahel e Sophie. Os níveis das transgressões, suas motivações e os conceitos de trauma individual e cultural são colocados em contraponto para aprofundar a análise da narrativa do romance. No nível pós- colonial, são empregados conceitos de Panikkar (1969), Festino (2007), Forter (2014) e Outka (2011), enquanto Sztompka (2000, 2004), Alexander (2000) e Joseph (2010) permeiam o nível sociopolítico, finalizando o nível afetivo com Caruth (1995), Bose (1998) e Almeida (2002). A hipótese deste trabalho é de que Roy foca nas transgressões para, em primeiro lugar, criticar determinados elementos da sociedade indiana, e para provocar reações em seus leitores. Esta é sustentada através da citação de seus ensaios e discursos na análise do romance. / In The God of Small Things (1997), from Arundhati Roy, the transgressions are substantial throughout the narrative, as the majority of them are performed by marginalized characters. In order to comprehend more deeply the reasons which propel the narrative and the characters to such violations, they were divided into three levels in this work: post-colonial, socio-political and affective. The transgressions analyzed here are the ones performed by the characters Velutha, Ammu, Estha, Rahel and Sophie. The levels of the transgressions, their motivations and the concepts of individual and cultural trauma are all correlated so that the intentions of the narrative are elucidated. In the post-colonial level, the concepts of Panikkar (1969), Festino (2007), Forter (2014) and Outka (2011) are applied, whereas Sztompka (2000, 2004), Alexander (2000) and Joseph (2010) are used for the socio-political level; the affective level is observed with notions from Caruth (1995), Bose (1998) and Almeida (2002). The hypothesis of this work is that Roy focuses on the transgressions of minor characters not only to criticize particular elements from the Indian society but also to trigger the reaction of the readers. This is supported by her essays and speeches quoted along the analysis of the novel.

The aim of this essay is to critically consider Arundhati Roy’s novel The God of Small Things from a postcolonial feminist perspective, with a special focus on how she models different representations of women, taking as a background the discussions within postcolonial feminism about subalternity and the representations of women from the so-called Third World in theory and literature, as well as the concept of agency from Cultural Studies. This purpose is reached by studying and comparing three main female characters in the novel: Mammachi, Baby Kochamma and Ammu, centering on their different ways of relating to the male hero of the novel, Velutha, an Untouchable in the lingering caste system of India. The essay argues that Roy has contributed with diverse representations of subaltern women in the ‘Third World’ who—despite their oppressed and marginalized status—display agency and are portrayed as responsible for their own actions.

This thesis argues that a prominent concern among contemporary writers of fiction is the recuperation of lost or occluded histories. Increasingly, contemporary writers, especially postcolonial writers, are using the medium of fiction to explore those areas of political and cultural history that have been written over or unwritten by the dominant narrative of “official” History. The act of excavating these past histories is simultaneously both traumatic and liberating – which is not to suggest that liberation itself is without pain and trauma. The retelling of traumatic pasts can lead, as is portrayed in The God of Small Things (1997), to further trauma and pain. Postcolonial writers (and much of the world today can be construed as postcolonial in one way or another) are seeking to bring to the fore stories of the past which break down the rigid binaries upon which colonialism built its various empires, literal and ideological. Such writing has in a sense been enabled by the collapse, in postcolonial and postmodernist discourse, of the Grand Narrative of History, and its fragmentation into a plurality of competing discourses and histories. The associated collapse of the boundary between history and fiction is recognized in the useful generic marker “historiographic metafiction,” coined by Linda Hutcheon. The texts examined in this study are all variants of this emerging contemporary genre. What they also have in common is a concern with the consequences of exile or diaspora. This study thus explores some of the representations of how the exilic experience impinges on the development of identity in the postcolonial world. The identities of “displaced” people must undergo constant change in order to adjust to the new spaces into which they move, both literal and metaphorical, and yet critical to this adjustment is the cultural continuity provided by psychologically satisfying stories about the past. The study shows that what the chosen texts share at bottom is their mutual need to retell the lost pasts of their characters, the trauma that such retelling evokes and the new histories to which they give birth. These texts generate new histories which subvert, enrich, and pre-empt formal closure for the narratives of history which determine the identities of nations.

阿蘭達蒂•羅依的第一部長篇小說(也是目前唯一一部)《微物之神》迄今已出版了八年之久。由於書中所觸及到的議題繁多，包括印度賤民階級所受到的不平等待遇，施加在婦女身上的肉體與精神上的暴力，或是在全球化下地方文化的邊緣化，所以至今仍贏得許多不同領域的研究者的關注。有些研究者將這本小說視為一個表現後殖民時期印度社會的文本；有些則將其視為將正規英文轉化為實驗性語言的絕佳典範；另外有些則將其視為一本宣揚女性權利的小說。 以上這些議題我在這本論文中或多或少都有所涉及，並以「純潔」典範的角度來探討。這裡所謂的「純潔」典範，指的是一種只接受特定受認可特質，並排斥任何在認可範圍外的存在，具將其視為「不潔」的系統。因此在文中「純潔」一字的指涉範圍含括衛生方面的乾淨，儀式上的潔淨，以至於在種族以及文化意含中的純淨。在第一章中，我會對文本做一個背景知識的介紹。在第二章，我將表明羅伊在小說中刻意破壞「大論述」的目的，並說明羅伊行文中表現出「大故事」的單薄度，以及這些大故事如何造成弱勢主體的隱没。在第三章中，討論將延伸到維魯沙這個角色上。首先我會解釋及解讀他賤民身份所被賦與的本質，接下來我會分析他所帶有的「不潔」意涵是如何及為什麼使他成為是代罪羔羊。在第四章中，我同樣的運用「純潔」與「不潔」間的對立關係來解讀小說中女性角色的處境。如同維魯沙一般，瑞海兒與阿慕也同樣在「純潔」符碼的宰制之下。它的標準支配了女性以及母性的合宜行止的內含。這些女性主角們也因此受限於「純潔」意涵的羅網之中。最後，我會在第五章中回頭總結前面幾章所提到的議題。此外，我會對於羅伊小說內容中所反映出來的當代印度社會與歷史的角度做一些討論，因為這點曾經引起爭議，並以此做為這本論文的尾聲。 / Arundhati Roy’s prestigious first novel (and maybe the only novel), The God of Small Things, has already come out for eight years. It contains such exuberance of topics, such as the inequality towards the untouchables, the physical and mental violence abuse upon woman, or the marginalization of the local culture under the influences of globalization, that it has earned the attention of many researchers from different fields even till now. Some of researchers consider the text as a fiction which presents postcolonial India, others find the book as a perfect demonstration of how proper English is transformed into a more experimental form; still others treat the novel as an assertion of female rights. In this thesis, I more or less touch all of the above topics, and investigate them in the light of “the model of purity,” the system which only recognizes the approved essence and wipes off anything that is not. Thus in this thesis the term purity refers to concepts of the hygienic purity, ritual purity, and also the purity in the ethnic and cultural aspect. I will give background knowledge to the book in Chapter One. Then, in Chapter Two I declare Roy’s intention to mime the grand narrative in her novel, and how Roy’s writing lays bare the fragility of The Great Stories and how they work to ensure the invisibility of the minor subjects. In Chapter Three, I extend my discussion to the character Velutha. Firstly I explain and interpret his essence by his untouchable background; then I will analyze how and why his impure essence makes him a victim of others’ irrational malice. In Chapter Four, I also apply the opposition of purity and impurity to read the situation of the female characters in the novel. Like Velutha, the heroines Rahel and Ammu are also under surveillance of the purity code. The criterion of purity dictates not only the context of decent womanhood but also motherhood. The female protagonists are thus caught in the inescapable network of purity. Finally, I will have a retrospective look on my thesis in Chapter Five. Apart from this, I will have a brief discussion about the social reality reflected in Roy’s text as this issue once brought about controversy. This small debate will serve as my finale.