"Paradise lost" and the narration of nation in Salman Rushdie´s Midnight´s Children

Abstract

This thesis proposes a study of Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" as a re-reading of John Milton's "Paradise Lost". Milton's epic has been read in terms of British imperialism and linked to a tradition of affirmation of nation. Taking up "Paradise Lost", "Midnight's Children" dialogues with the epic's stature of upholder of nationality and suggests that the perception of nation-ness associated to it informs also the independent post-colonial Indian national identity. But as the nation's explosive heterogeneity surfaces "Midnight's Children" characterizes it more as an imagined community instead of the stable homogeneity its narrator first believes it to be. This leads to a questioning of the nation as the privileged space in which to negotiate meanings and identification. At this point "Midnight's Children" highlights and adapts Milton's concept of the 'paradise within' as a better positioning before these difficulties. In its proposed reading of "Paradise Lost", in which the 'paradise within' is the central theme rather than national legitimization, "Midnight's Children" also proposes new ways of viewing the former imperial national self-representation and its constituting texts.