Shalimar, the ex-centric: Rushdie reads Milton through Derrida

Authors

  • Luiz Fernando Ferreira Sá UFMG – Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. Faculdade de Letras. Pesquisador do CNPq. Belo Horizonte – MG – Brasil.

Keywords:

Rushdie, Intertextuality, Fiction, Influence,

Abstract

There is a murder and the murderer is the ambassador’s Kashmiri chauffeur and his name is Shalimar the Clown. How does this sweet-natured clown become a killer? With this overall plot in mind, the present essay articulates these excentric, unusual, and uncanny figurations in relation to John Milton’s Paradise Lost with a view also to discussing Jacques Derrida’s notion of destinerrance as a possible alternative to literary influence and as a further elaboration on intertextuality in general. The essay examines what sorts of religious, literary, philosophical, and/or mythical references appear throughout the novel and resonate to the epic poem. In brief, the clown turned murderer can and ought to be related to the Fall and its outcomes.

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Issue

n.37, 2013

Section

Literatures in english language

License

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