J.M HARRIS'IN LOKI'NIN MÜJDESI ADLI ESERINDE YENIDEN YAZIMIN MERKEZSIZLEŞTIRME OLARAK ANALIZI

Abstract

Although rewriting master narratives like the Bible and mythology is a well-established literary sub-genre which goes back to Ovid and Virgil, it has obtained a new dimension as a challenging literary technique with Postmodernism. In the contemporary literary canon, there is a tendency to revisit canonical old texts and this literary practice is called “rewriting”. Many authors rewrite these old stories from new perspectives and sometimes even in more modern contexts. This literary method is full of promise of freshness and novelty for the author, the reader, and the critic. Rewriting an older text is to rediscover, redefine, and re-interpret it from a perspective challenging enough to force the reader and the critic to question everything they previously knew about the text. It is in this sceptical mood that postmodernist fiction employs the technique of rewriting. By means of rewriting the old texts, authors open up, for mini-narratives, new space previously invaded by grand narratives. With the newly freed mini-narratives come alternative realities that deconstruct the universal reality of grand narratives. This article aims to analyze the concept of rewriting in the novel genre as a postmodern critic of and challenge to grand narratives. How grand narratives work and how they are deconstructed through rewriting are analyzed in the example of the comparative analysis of the trickster figure Loki from Norse mythology and the rewriting of these myths from Loki’s perspective in Joanne M. Harris’ The Gospel of Loki. Rewriting in the context of this study is defined as a conscious, critical, and politically motivated postmodern technique.