Juxtaposition Of Realism and Myth in Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown and the Enchantress of Florence

Abstract

Salman Rushdie, the author of many novels and critical essays occupies a pivotal role in the literary arena of contemporary literary world. Since the publication of Midnight’s Children, Rushdie has been dominating the world of literature as a leading exemplum of postcolonial, postmodern and Diaspora writings. Generally, ‘Myth’ has two functions – answering the questions of many unknown territories of life such as the presence of the occult elements and encouraging the change in the social orders, traditions and customs for the moral-well-being of humans on the earth. Rushdie as a proponent of magical realism, his world is in between fact and fantasy, the narrative always hovers between past and present, between myth and history and between reality and romance. Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown is a rewritten myth of India. By using the codes of modern thrillers, adventure stories, political satires, folklore, and slap stick comedies and myths, Rushdie has recreated the world of Kashmir of 1960 as Kashmir of ancient time. Bringing out the history of 15^th and 16^th centuries of India and Europe close together, Rushdie, in The Enchantress of Florence, has enchanted the minds of readers with his magical realistic spell. Thus, Rushdie has touched the worlds of political history, sociology, mythology and modernity in these novels which enable the readers somehow find themselves as one of the characters of the novels and transcend the boundary of the real world to enter into the world of magical realism.