Volume II Special Issue I January 2022

Name of Author : Dipanwita Naskar

Title of the paper : The Gendered Body in The Postcolonial Mythopoeic Drama: Karnads Yayati and The Fire and the Rain

Abstract: This paper proposes to look at the untold tales of the rebelling bodily desires, dissenting sexuality, corporeal experiences of the dislocated, dispossessed ‘other’ as recorded in one of the greatest postcolonial Indian playwrights, Girish Karnads revisionist plays that deal with the complex ideas of myth and reality, past and present, gender and performance. In Karnad’s mythopoeic play, Yayati, Sharmishthas enslaved body threatens to dismantle the Brahminical impositions whereas Chitralekhas uninhibited assertion of the indomitable desires of her reproductive body and her ultimate act of self-destruction symbolize a revolting resistance against the patriarchal power structures. Similarly Karnads another reconstructed drama, The Fire and the Rain, revolves around the rebelling assertion of Vishakhas selfhood through her exploited, subjugated and oppressed body, while rebelliously interrogating the phallocentric ideals of honour, sacrifice, and chastity through the brutally dismembered and annihilated body of Nittilai.

Keywords : Body, Sexuality, Myth, Gender, Performance, Marginalization, Resistance

DOI :

Page Number : 11-16