현대 영국문학과 탈식민주의적 경험의 형상화 : 살만 러쉬디의 『자정의 아이들』을 중심으로

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This is a study to look into Salman Rushdie's significances as a "postcolonial" English writer, mainly discussing his second novel. Midnight's Children(1980).
It seems an almost accepted fact that Salman Rushdie triggerred the advancing surge of a certain symptomatic characteristic in contemporary English literature, (or rather, literatures in English) which can be appropriately put into "postcolonial" literatures. His fame as a writer soared right after the award of the Booker Prize, the most prestigeous award on fiction in Britain, in 1981. And yet he became much more (in)famous, when the late A. Khomeini ordered him to be killed for blaspheming Islam and the prophet, Mohammed.
In Midnight's Children, Rushdie privatizes modern Indian history seen through the eye of the protagonist-hero, Saleem Sinai, who is one of the 1001 midnight's children. Being born at the exact moment of India's independence, Saleem forges a strong bond between his personal life and Indian society after the Independence. In order to do that, the author utilizes various levels of metaphors and creates a fictional world of magic realism with a strong ego-centric and soliipsistic narrative tone. Thus, this novel can be read as an artistic experiment on postmodern narrative devices as well as a socio-political satire on postcolonial worlds. Saleem's narrative reflects the author's skepticism and primary concerns with imperfectness of any narrative form, or of any art form.