Title of the Paper: Impact of Postcolonialism in the Retelling of Epics

Abstract

Indian Epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata, occupies a supreme position in the life of Indians because they are considered to be devotional works rather than pieces of literature. Instead of understanding them as stories of different societies, Indians consider the protagonists as incarnations of God and tend to follow them in life. Many of these works are written from the perspective of men and women are silent spectators. The introduction of postcolonial theories led to a lot of retelling in these stories which tries to narrate the stories from the point of view of the ‘other’. The writers of these retellings claim that most of these works give voice to their characters through the silence left by the authors of the original text. Many characters who never spoke in the original text became the central characters in the retellings and brought out their story from their perspective. The main aim of most of these retellings were to give voice to the marginalized sections of the original text and allow them to substantiate their activities. The ‘vanquished’ and the ‘defeated’ speak about themselves thereby giving a new perspective to the story. This paper focuses to understand the impact of such postcolonial theories in the retellings of Ramayana in the selected works of Sara Joseph.