Conflict,Subversion And Reconstruction:A New Historical Reading Of The Inheritance Of Loss

The Inheritance of Loss is the masterpiece of Kiran Desai which tells a typical Indian story.Three generations struggle in the post-colonial nation.Kiran Desai puts her characters into fragmentary historical events.The old judge,Biju and Sai struggle under the great immigration and social unrest.As the only female character,Sai represents the female power in Indian society.Kiran Desai describes two individual great immigrations: the old judge goes to Britain and fails to fit into the British society;Biju goes to America as an illegal immigrant and finally escapes from the migration movement.New Historicism stresses on the intimate relation between literature and history.It expresses a special understanding about history.The Inheritance of Loss is written via New Historical methods and reflects on New Historical spirits.This novel sees the coexistence of artificial literature and real history.The story of three generations blends into fragmentary history.Based on New Historicism,this thesis will focus on the conflicts in post-colonial Indian society,such as the huge immigration movement and chaotic GNLF riot.Then the author of the thesis will expose the subverting narrative methods of this novel and explain Kiran Desai's aim to reconstruct post-colonial Indian society.This thesis is divided into five chapters.The first chapter gives a brief introduction of The Inheritance of Loss and Kiran Desai,foreign and domestic critical responses to the work,research questions and objectives,theoretical framework and structure arrangement of this thesis.Considering the historicity of text,the second chapter presents the conflicts in post-colonial India.Kiran Desai puts forward turbulent social background and traditional values of India on the one hand and focuses on ordinary people's suffering and traumatic experiences on the other hand.Considering the textuality of history,the third chapter analyzes the new historical narrative methods in The Inheritance of Loss.Reviewing the New Historicism,the fourth chapter shows how the post-colonial Indian people are reconstructed in TheInheritance of Loss.The last chapter summarizes that Kiran Desai applies New Historicism to show her concern about ordinary individuals.Under superficial chaotic narration,Kiran Desai expresses her deep hope for a brighter future of both India and Indian people.