| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 外國語文研究所 === 103 === This thesis argues that Jhumpa Lahiri’s works pose a new perspective on South Asian American immigrants by depicting them as new cosmopolitan subjects who could use their mobile traveling experience and photography narrative to reverse the restriction of traditional host-guest relationship, even transcending all differences of culture, religion, ethnicity, region, and class in the age of globalization.
Chapter One will examine two stories in Interpreter of Maladies. I assume Twinkle in “This Blessed House” and the narrator in “The Third and Final Continent” as new cosmopolitan subjects with fluidity through theoretical insights of Elizabeth Jackson and Susan Koshy. I suggest that these two characters show their new sense of belonging as global sojourners by their travel experience and break through the ethnic and religious identity through the renewed host-guest relationship. Chapter Two will then focus on the identity transformation of two South Asian American females, Ashima and Moushumi, into new cosmopolites in The Namesake. Following Gita Rajan and Shailja Sharma, I contend that both characters anchor an alternative notion of home in order to renovate their identity as global citizens and deterritorialize the national and cultural identities. Chapter Three will inspect how “Hema and Kaushik,” the second part of Unaccustomed Earth, depicts the two protagonists as new cosmopolitan subjects through their unconstrained and fluid definition of home, photography and travel narrative. I argue that due to their experiences of the feeling of foreignness, the identity crisis, and the loss of self-orientation in the globalized world, they learn to negotiate and redefine their identity through the fluid nature of globalization.
Keywords: Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies, The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth, new cosmopolitanism, new cosmopolitan subject, identity, globalization
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