| Abstract [eng] |
The dissertation investigates the postmodern features of Salman Rushdie’s novels Shame and Midnight’s Children within the theoretical framework of postmodernism. The inward-directed approach to a literary text, which has been chosen as a basis for the research, incorporates the body of texts by the famous theorists of postmodernism Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Ihab Hassan, Jean Baudrillard and others. With the view to the indeterminacy of the approach, the concept of decentering, embracing such terms as the elimination of the transcendental signified, supplement, simulacrum, indeterminacy, the death of the author, has been chosen as a key concept to discuss text-oriented propositions. The analysis of Salman Rushdie’s novel Midnight’s Children explores the undermining of the traditional connotations of synecdoche. The interpretation of the text reveals how the strategy of play is employed to incorporate traditional images into the postmodern narrative of the novel. The connotations attributed to different images are constantly subjected to subversion and undermining in the text. The investigation of the concept indeterminacy with the view to the narrative of Midnight’s Children focuses on the imagery related to the concept of the void and its supplements. The analysis of Salman Rushdie’s novel Shame draws on the concept of the image as a simulacrum/supplement, employing J. Derrida and J. Baudrillard’s theoretical propositions. It uncovers the detachment of the postmodern image from a basic reality and the vulnerability of its supplements. The interpretation of Salman Rushdie’s novels reveals the complexity and indeterminacy of the connotations attributed to the concept of decentering, thus asserting the overall tendency of postmodernism towards unmaking. |
