The Transgressing Muse

In the newly published Step Across This Line, Salman Rushdie, an India-born British novelist of international renown, opines:"In our deepest natures, we are frontier-crossing beings. We know this by the stories we tell ourselves; for we are storytelling animals, too". Implicit within this contention is the notion of border-crossing/transgressing that serves as an essential component of Rushdie's Weltanschauung, and one of his most significant subject matters as well.Based on Salman Rushdie's works, this dissertation investigates: (1) the formation of his"border-crossing"; (2) the actualization of this world outlook in his literary creation; and (3) the gains and losses of his"border-crossing"narratives. This dissertation consists of six chapters.Chapter One presents a brief introduction of Rushdie's literary background, giving specificity to the profound influence exerted by his experiences on the formation of"border-crossing". Through a comprehensive review of the Rushdian literary criticisms in recent years, the author contends that there has been a tendency to over-emphasize the significance of"hybridity"in his works. In the last analysis, the author argues that what is implied in Rushdie's"border-crossing"is the destruction of those historical, cultural, formal and religious orthodoxies, instead of the mere geographical frontiers.Of paramount importance are history, culture, poetics and religion that constitute principal parts of Salman Rushdie's"border-crossing". The following four chapters center upon Rushdie's representations of Indian and Pakistan histories, Indian diasporas, Indian English poetics and Islam respectively, investigating how this Weltanschauung finds expression in his novels. In Chapter Two, the author argues that Rushdie innovatively"fantasizes"and personalizes Indian and Pakistan histories so that the borderline between fact and fabrication is crossed. Chapter Three focuses on Salman Rushdie's representation of Indian diasporas, demonstrating how they cross the boundary between Indian culture and its British counterpart, and subsequently strike a delicate balance between their homeland and their hostland. Chapter Four gives expression to Rushdie's viewpoints on Indian English poetics, crystallizing the textual strategies of"language appropriation"and"narrative appropriation"employed by him to deconstruct the binary opposition between Western poetics and its Eastern counterpart. What Salman Rushdie thinks of Islam manifests itself in Chapter Five, in which the author contends that the fundamental cornerstone of faith in God might be shattered through his provocative interrogation of Islamic beliefs and practices. The points the author wants to make in this chapter, however, are that as a form of faith, ideology and culture, Islam assumes a special importance among the Islamic countries, and that Rushdie's"border-crossing"not only makes an Orientalist of him, but lays bare the"secularist essentialism"within the"secularism"he is always boasting of.In Chapter Six, the conclusion, the author summarizes the outstanding achievements Rushdie's novels of"border-crossing"have gained. Tracing Rushdie's"border-crossing"to its postmodernist basis, the author gives an evaluation of its gains and losses. This chapter concludes that"border-crossing"enables Rushdie to"write back"against those hegemonic discourses. However, his neglecting Indian and Pakistan proletariats'political demands, ignoring the significance of"strategic essentialism"and identifying himself with Orientalism will ineluctably entangle him in more troubles.