Revisiting Popular Bengali Folklores to Re-imagine the Past and Engage with the Present: Gun Island and the Tribulations of Climate Change

University of Bucharest Review. Literary and Cultural Studies Series

卷:XI/2021

Roohi Huda¹ 

[1] School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Brac University, Dhaka;

关键词: climate change;    progress;    migration;    global warming;    snake goddess;    myth;   

DOI  :  10.31178/UBR.11.1.9

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Amitav Ghosh, in his 2019 novel Gun Island chooses to discourse on theantipathetic relation of human progress and the environment manifested asclimate change. In this remarkable novel Ghosh visits two popular Bengalifolklores: Manasa Devi – a snake goddess, and Chand Sawdagor – a merchantwho was cursed by the snake goddess, and utilizes the stories to re-imagine apast in which certain events take place that eerily parallels the present, especiallythe issue of climate change. Ghosh’s appropriation of ideas from the epic ManasaMangal Kabyo – from the canon of Bengali folklore – and shaping them toinclude pressing contemporary climate issues that oppress individuals, environs,animal habitats, and global major cities around the world, invest the thesis of thenovel with global significance. Ghosh transmutes the folklores by reimaginingthe past, so they come to inform a global scene: dictating and vindicatingoutcomes all over the world. Ghosh concludes that absence of a globally acceptedauthority that would negotiate the human-environment interaction for thebetterment of both is a dangerous gap.

【 授权许可】

Unknown