The Stuff that Realisms are Made on: R.K. Narayan’s The Painter of Signs

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Abstract

R. K. Narayan's realism has been consistently read either as an expression of an authentic Indianness or as an expression of a deeply universalist consciousness. This essay shifts the terms of the debate to demonstrate that for Narayan, reality is an effect of the relationships of force between different linguistic environments as they interact and consolidate themselves against each other. More specifically, it is the particularities of Narayan's “Indian English”—his emphasis on the asymmetries between metropolitan languages and the languages of the global South—that constitutes for him a realism politically charged and formulated through a complex theory of language.
Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)213-228
JournalSouth Asian Review
Volume32
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 2011

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