| This study undertakes a critical reading of Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost, set against the thematic background of literary globalization, or globalization as it is imagined through the novel as a literary form. Within a three-pronged research framework, issues of theoretical, structural and critical significance are jointly considered. First, the study aims to provide a principled account of globalization as a multifaceted phenomenon by focussing on a variety of theoretical models. Second, the novel's value assessment of a global plot structure is studied through a rhetorical analysis of axiological discourse. Third, at each step of the analysis, figurative patterns in the novel are critically compared with other modes of representation of globalization in non-literary discourse. Each aspect of the study conforms to a three-term conceptual structure. The theoretical account of globalization is thus undertaken by focusing on a discourse-, process- and program-oriented conception of global issues. Axiological structures by means of which the novel patterns rhetorically its narrative theme are distinguished for their part in terms of argumentative dialogue, emplotment and voice. Last, the cross-comparison between literary and non-literary representations of globalization focuses on translation as an ideological, meta-narrative and teleological device to frame discourses on globalism, globalization proper and globality. The study's findings can be correlated with the critical impulses underlying the research. By shifting the theoretical outlooks on globalization to account for the latter's complexity, the study brings into focus the recurring issue of human agency in a global context. Further, a layered analysis of value formation in the novel emphasizes a “Rhetoric of Fiction” far more subtle in its approach to globalization than the postmodern standard of literary irony or equivocation. Finally, the critical evaluation of translation as a prevailing “global trope” brings forward a composite and contrasted figurative structure too readily subsumed under a celebratory discourse and the corollary assertion of a translated global condition. |
