Interpretation Of The Carnivalesque In Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children

Midnight’s Children is a postmodern masterpiece of Salman Rushdie, a worldly-renowned British writer of Indian origin. His critical vision on the East and West and hisadvocacy of humanistic secularism are attributed to the fact that though born in Bombay,Rushdie migrated to England at the age of14and spent most of his life in England andAmerica. His writing is acclaimed for its heteroglossic language, fantastic mixture of myth,history and religion and his cosmopolitan vision.Rushdie’s novel Midnight’s Children has brought him considerable fame. It is thewinner of1981Booker Prize. The novel is distinguished for its ingenious adoption of MagicalRealism, its farcical parody of Indian history and its fragmentation and hybridity. As a writerof controversies, Rushdie’s works are inadequately introduced to China. Hence, the study onMidnight’s Children is barely adequate. Most scholars interpret the novel with reference toMagical Realism and Post-colonial and Postmodern theory. Yet, it is noticeable thatcarnivalesque elements are interspersed in the novel. This thesis expects to investigate thenovel from the perspective of carnival language, carnival character, and intertextual dialoguein light of Bakhtin’s carnival theory.The thesis includes an introduction, three chapters and a conclusion.The introduction gives a brief introduction to the literary achievements of SalmanRushdie, his novel Midnight’s Children and the significance of the thesis.Chapter One explores the carnival language in Midnight’s Children. In the novel,Rushdie makes full use of vulgar and colloquial language and intentionally adopts languagedeviation. Moreover, his skillful employment of diversified rhetorical devices helps to achievea unique artistic effect. Rushdie’s innovative and irreverent use of English proves to be an immense subversion against Standard English.Chapter Two analyzes the carnival characters in Midnight’s Children. Carnival charactersare generally characterized by grotesque appearance, rebellious act, hallucinations andinsanity. In the carnival festival, clowns turn into kings and kings undergo the process ofcrowning and uncrowning.Chapter Three dwells on the intertextual dialogue between the history and the text, thepretexts and the text as well as intertextual dialogue within the text. The dialogue betweenhistory and the text helps to eliminate the line between the Real and the Virtual; the interplaybetween pretexts and the text embodies Rushdie’s critical hereditary of literary classics;intertextual dialogue within the text intensifies the suspense and dramatic effect of the novel.Based on the analysis above, this thesis comes to the conclusion that with the guidanceof Bakhtin’s carnival theory we can give Midnight’s Children a new meaning. SalmanRushdie’s Midnight’s Children not only reveals the influence of folk culture on the languageand characterization of literary creation, but also helps to unearth the literary value ofgrotesque and vulgarity which were marginalized by classic aesthetics in the literary history.At the same time, the spirit of carnivalesque, namely the spirit of subversion, dialogue andtransgression revealed in the novel gives utterance to the silenced multi-cultural margins,injects the novel with a polyphonic chorus of heteroglot voices, and thus demonstratesRushdie’s humanistic concern.