Ethnic Worlds in Select Indian Fiction by Dutta Juri;

Author:Dutta, Juri;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SAGE Publications India Pvt, Ltd.
Published: 2015-05-19T08:13:41+00:00

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Folkloric Materials in Ethnic Novels (With Special Reference to Narayan, Rong Bong Terang, Lummer Dai, Yeshe Dorjee Thongchi and Sishuram Pegu)

Every literary work bears the stamp of culture. This is true both when the author writes about his culture or when he writes about a culture that he has studied, lived and experienced. The author creates out of what he knows, what he experiences and what he is familiar with; to express this in terms of poststructuralist philosophy, one could say that the author creates out of what has ‘always already’ existed. Every society has various traditional beliefs, customs, legends and myths which play a vital role in shaping the perspectives of the inhabitants of these societies. One only needs to pay a cursory glance at the vast number of stories that were written and, in fact, continue to be written in India, the origins of which can be traced to the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. The lives and the actions of people are powerfully influenced by folk beliefs and customs. Ethnographic novels attempt to reflect the reality of the communities. These fictions signify the relationship between the individual and his/her society.

While trying to analyse the essentials that enter into the creation of literature, we have to understand the use of folklore in literature. It would be appropriate to quote Thomas Wolfe (1943: xxix) in this context:

If the writer has used the clay of life to make his book, he has only used what all men must, what none can keep from using. Fiction is not fact, but fiction is fact selected and understood, fiction is fact arranged and charged with purpose. Dr. Jonhson remarked that a man would turn over half a library to make a single book; in the same way, a novelist may turn over half the people in a town to make a single figure in his novel.

Paul A. Bennett, in his article ‘Folklore and the Literature to Come’ (1952: 23), discusses three distinct relationships of folklore to literature. For him, folklore can be used (a) directly as literature, (b) in a modified form of literature, and (c) as a plane of reference in the production of literature. A creative writer uses folkloric materials in literature in a modified form. And he/she collects the materials from various sources. I would like to quote Bennett (1952: 23) here:

…the learning of the folk, the knowledge of an untutored people made one by geography, occupation or culture—or by a combination of the three—supplies a great body of raw materials for the creative artist. The particular value of folklore as raw material is that it offers a tested pattern of appeal, the appeal of a striking character or a sure-fire treatment of love, lust or rage; of birth, life or death.

Literature can thus use folkloric materials such as folktales, folk beliefs, myths or legends for structuring a story as well as for thematic purposes; use of folklore in literature is however not limited to this: folklore can also be incorporated as characters or in the settings of the creative pieces.

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