LANGUAGE IN INDIA

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Volume 24:8 August 2024
ISSN 1930-2940

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Transgressive Death, Dead and Lifelessness in Vijaydan Detha’s Folk Narratives

Rashmi Bhura


Vijaydan Detha (1926-2013)
Courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vijaydan_Detha

Abstract

While folktales are stories from and for the (common) folk, they are often transgressive at both literary and socio-cultural level. For instance, the phenomenon of death that holds a close affinity to human beings, at personal and social level both, is not always addressed with the same seriousness, gloominess, and philosophical perspective as the real world of the folk. Death and dead, lifeless bodies, embody myth and mystery transgressing biological and social boundaries. This playful approach is used for different contextual and textual fulfilment. Even so, the playful transgression itself dispenses the gravitas of the phenomenon of death, especially in socio-cultural contexts. This paper analyses three folktales of Rajasthan, credited to Vijaydan Detha, that engage in such playful transgressions with the idea of lifeless bodies and death. The tales, as examples of Corpse Literature, reveal and question at the same time, the role and influence of folktales in its contribution to the narrative of death. How then does one regard these playful transgressions on death in terms of meaning and discourse?

Keywords: Folk Narratives, Marwar, Vijaydan Detha, Corpse Literature, death, folktales, lifeless bodies, playful transgression

When traced through the yarns of history and literature, the ‘corpse’ as a text transitions freely to the ‘corpse’ as a tool. The body and the phenomenon of death are often intertwined to develop genres of horror, gothic and trauma narratives. To be brought together as a disciplinary field of study, ‘Corpse Literature’ is yet to synthesise the available diversity of approaches, including anthropological and medical. Nevertheless, an ongoing dialogue on the literature of the body, coexists with the ever-growing list of texts and genres that experiment new dimensions of playing with body and death narratives. Disability and trauma narratives, specifically, associate the concept of identity (self and/or social) fervently to the body-mind binary.

This literary symbol of ‘body’, attached or detached to identity and life, is blurring boundaries of socio-textual sense, while adapting to transgressions as dauntless as the stories of spirit and purgatory. The body runs, not merely against conventional and biological theories, but is also brimming with experimental approaches to metaversal elements. With or without life, a body becomes more than just an entity. A body without life is not necessarily a corpse anymore; the shifting of the spirit, and the phenomenon of the spirit are played with, in renewed artistic enthusiasm

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Rashmi Bhura
JAIN (Deemed-to-be University)
Bengaluru, Karnataka 560069, India
rashmibhura07@gmail.com
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