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Title Tracing Cultural Confluence: A Structuralist Study of Folkloric South Asian Literature

Author(s) Urooj Islam

Abstract This research focuses on the structuralist analysis of South Asian folkloric literature. The selected folkloric literature from India, Maldives, Sri Lanka and Nepal foregrounds that all distinct communities of South Asia are deeply connected culturally in regards to its folklores therefore four stories: Soonimaya, Raja Rasalu, Sinhabahu and Don Hiyala and Alifulu, have been selected for this study. The study aims to reveal the cultural confluence in the folkloric literature of South Asia. The folklores have been analyzed in particular cultural and spatial/geographical contexts of South Asia. The study is done on two levels: the first level analyzes structure of stories using a structural narrative approach centering on Proppian taxonomic analysis and second level connects it to Barthesian cultural narratology, offering the opportunity to unravel the cultural commonalities in the folkloric texts of distinct South Asian countries. The idea is further substantiated with Claude Levi Strauss’s notion that all myths possess similar sociocultural function within society. Moreover, the cultural confluence has been decrypted through the investigation of the cultural markers of South Asian region, reflected by the conventions, customs, doctrines, lifestyle, cuisine and linguistic components of the indigenous people of South Asia which is functional in highlighting the folkloric culture of the region. These cultural markers have been studied under Vladimir Propp’s morphological model and Roland Barthes’ cultural/referential code. It posits that attending to narrative structures of folkloric literature of South Asian region facilitates a deeper understanding of South Asian culture. Further, it explicates that how different regions stand at junction by placing within the larger context of the system of culture.

Type Thesis/Dissertation MS

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Department English

Language English

Publication Date 2020-08-19

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