The Ground Beneath Her Feet: Myth, Migration and Identity in Salman Rushdie

Abstract

The Ground Beneath Her Feet – Salman Rushdie’s 1999 cult novel – stands as a very rich and complex cultural text, which today should be praised for the originality and intelligence of the author’s literary invention and for offer- ing a crucial key for the understanding of essential aspects of our present. In the novel the Anglo-Indian writer investigates such complex topics as myth, migration, identity and celebrity, through an extremely rich narrative, which mixes ancient mythology and contemporary pop culture. More specifically the novel represents a space in which ancient myths (namely, the myth of Orpheus) migrate into new forms – shaping complex identities – and at the same time a rich narrative about music and pop musicians as contemporary myths, or better metaphors, of migration. It might be argued that myth, migration and identity represent the main themes and discursive forces of Rushdie’s musical narrative; these very forces are, in our perspective, essential in order to understand and respond to the present moment of the globalised era. DOI: 10.17456/SIMPLE-108 Bibliography Albertazzi, Silvia. 2003. “Why do we care about singers?” Music in The Ground Beneath Her Feet . Elsa Linguanti & Viktoria Tchernichova eds. The Great Work of Making Real: Salman Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet. Pisa: ETS, 91-97. Auslander, Philip. 2006. Performing Glam Rock: Gender and Theatricality in Popular Music . Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Bassi, Shaul. 2003. Orpheus’ Other Voyage. Myth, Music and Globalisation. Elsa Linguanti & Viktoria Tchernichova eds. The Great Work of Making Real: Salman Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet. Pisa: ETS, 99-114. Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1984. Rabelais and his World (trans. H. Islowsky). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Barthes, Roland. 1972. Mythologies . London: Paladin. Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture . London-New York: Routledge. Browne, Harry. 2013. The Frontman: Bono (In the Name of Power) . London: Verso. Concilio, Carmen. 2003. “Worthy of the World”: The Narrator/Photographer in Salman Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet . Elsa Linguanti & Viktoria Tchernichova eds. The Great Work of Making Real: Salman Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet . Pisa: ETS, 117-127. Coupe, Laurence. 1997. Myth . London and New York: Routledge. Critchley, Simon. 2016. On Bowie . London: Serpent’s Tail. Cupitt, Don. 1982. The World to Come. London: SCM Press. DeNora, Tia. 2000. Music in Everyday Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. During, Simon. 2005. Cultural Studies. A Critical Introduction . London-New York: Routledge. English, James F. & John Frow. 2006. Literary Authorship and Celebrity Culture. J. F. English ed. A Concise Companion to Contemporary British Fiction. Oxford: Blackwell, 39-57. Holmes, Su & Sean Redmond. 2010. Editorial. A Journal in Celebrity Studies . Celebrity Studies , 1, 1, 1-10. Kadzis, Peter. 2000. Salman Speaks. Michael Reder ed. Conversations with Salman Rushdie . Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 216-227. Longhurst, Brian. 2007. Popular Music and Society. Cambridge: Polity. Malik, Kenan. 2013. Foreword. Robert Eaglestone & Martin McQuillan eds. Salman Rushdie . London: Bloomsbury. Nancy, Jean-Luc. 2007. Listening . New York: Fordham University Press. Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1931-1958. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. A. Burks, C. Hartshorne & P. Weiss eds. Cambridge (MA): The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Ricoeur, Paul. 1991. A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection and Imagination . M. J. Valdes ed. Wheatsheaf: Harvester. Rollason, Christopher. 2006. Rushdie’s Un-Indian Music: The Ground Beneath Her Feet , http://www.yatrarollason.info/files/RushdieGFupdated.pdf (consulted on 15/09/2018). Rushdie, Salman. 2000. The Ground Beneath Her Feet . London: Vintage. Rushdie, Salman. 2002a. Globalization. Step Across This Line. Collected Non-Fiction 1992-2002 . Salman Rushdie ed. London: Vintage, 296-298. Rushdie, Salman. 2002b. U2. Step Across This Line. Collected Non-Fiction 1992-2002 . Salman Rushdie ed. London: Vintage, 102-106. Rushdie, Salman. 2017. The Golden House. New York: Random House. Sanga, Jaina. 2001. Salman Rushdie’s Postcolonial Metaphors . Westport-London: Greenwood Press. U2. 2000. ‘The Ground Beneath her Feet’. U2 et al . The Million Dollar Hotel . Music from the Motion Picture , Island (cd). Warden, John. 1982. Orpheus. The Metamorphoses of a Myth . Toronto-Buffalo-London: University of Toronto Press.