| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 外國文學所 === 97 === This thesis explores Salman Rushdie’s playful historiography and grotesque realism Midnight’s Children. Chapter One examines Rushdie’s playful historiography in terms of Hindu worldviews, mythological allusions, and Rushdie’s own remarks in interviews. The historiographical structure in Midnight’s Children is uniquely excessive in content and circular in time. In the novel, Rushdie plays with the idea of history by focusing on the dubious nature of memory, time, and historical events. Chapter Two discusses how bodies in Midnight’s Children are well inscribed with cultural and historical conflicts—they are sites where Rushdie’s unique visions of history are illuminated. A Bakhtinian reading of those grotesque body images highlights Rushdie’s playful historiography in terms of protruding/expanding body parts, open body orifices, excrement images and uncrowned kings. With all these images of grotesque realism supporting his visions of history, Rushdie playfully annihilates the narrative and meaning of grand “History.” Midnight’s Children thus serves as an alternative rewriting of Indian history; the novel supplements and problematizes the official history in a playful way.
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