Reading / Writing India Across Cultures: Comparative Study of Receptions of Three Indian English Texts Across Three Audiences and Two Languages

Abstract

This thesis compares the near-simultaneous receptions of three recent Indian English works of fiction - Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, The Alchemy of Desire by Tarun Tejpal and The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai - by three distinct audiences: Indian, non-Indian Anglophone and French. Within the framework of reception theory, where culture is bound to a geographical location, 'Reading/ Writing India Across Cultures' examines the receptions of Indian English literature in its three audiences to observe the effect of factors such as existing hierarchies between the culture represented by a literary text and culture(s) receiving that text, hegemonic reading approaches to Indian English literature such as postcolonial theory, and author identities inflected by distance from the culture of origin. It also examines the role of literary prizes in shaping the publication and reception of literary works. In its focus on the French audience of Indian English literature, 'Reading/ Writing India Across Cultures' is an attempt to fill in a gap created by the anglocentricity of the field of Indian English literature. Tracing the history of French translations of Indian English literature, this thesis argues that the double-edged process of translation is both a reception in itself and a tool that shapes the reception of a literary text within a linguistic community. In view of the history of colonial relations between France and India and the place that both countries occupy within the present day global hierarchy, this thesis emphasises the need to examine French reception of Indian English literature within the framework of reception and postcolonial translation studies, and also the relevance of French translation practices vis-à-vis Indian English literature and French attitudes towards French postcolonial literatures to any such study. More generally, this thesis seeks to question the prevalent perceptions about Indian English literature and the hegemony of the postcolonial perspective as the reading approach to this Literature in current literary scholarship, and to suggest the need for a more sophisticated application of reception theory in dealing with literary works by writers nominally from the same country but of different resident status, which circulate internationally with great rapidity in a globalised context.