| It is a typical creative method for post-colonial literature to “write back” to colonial canons to challenge the centre from the margin.Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children,being such a case,writes back to E.M.Forster’s A Passage to India as one of its intertexts.This process rectifies the stereotypical Indian image in colonial canon and entitles Indo-Anglian writers to Indian writing;demonstrates Rushdie’s ambition of gaining a foothold in English literature by responding to and breaking through Forster’s literary techniques in Aspects of the Novel by means of a series of postmodern skills.Through an intertextual study based on Edward W.Soja’s Thirdspace theory,this thesis provides an analysis of two groups of spatial writing in the two texts,namely,the Civil Station and Methwold’s Estate,Marabar Caves and Midnite-Confidential Club,as well as an interpretation of a metaphorical space,the pickle-factory,and intends to reveal Rushdie’s criticism of post-independence Indian politics and his distorted picture of India reflected in his efforts to reconstruct Indian writing through a comparison of the(in)congruities in Forster’s and Rushdie’s Indian images.It is also hoped that the thesis can reveal the canon formation of Rushdie and his works from the margin to the centre as well as the subversion of the dichotomous paradigm of “margin/centre” in postcolonial studies. |
