Chutnification : the recycling of canonical texts in the Indian English novel

Abstract

Drawing from Bakhtin’s idea of dialogism, Julia Kristeva interpreted writing as a paragrammatic practice that incorporates reading. Using the concepts of genotext, phenotext and intertext that she put forth, this article studies the ways in which canonical texts, either religious or secular, from both the West (The Bible, Canterbury Tales, Shakespeare) and the East (The Ramayana, The Mahabharata, The Koran, The Arabian Nights, The Kama Sutra, The Pancha Tantra, the Jataka tales, The Katha Sarit Sagara, The Akbar Nama) are mixed with contemporary sources to produce the hybrid postcolonial variety of the Indian English Novel. It examines who among the Indian writers of English use this strategy of chutnification, at what precise moment in history, how and why they do so, and what the implications are for literary theory.