Myth And History In Amitav Ghosh’s The Circle Of Reason

Abstract

The Novel The Circle of Reason (1986) is a unique combination of myth and history. Myth mediates the immediate temporality. Myth offers itself to subversion to highlight contemporary socio-cultural history. However, the fictitious element, if not a dominant one plays equally an important role to present actuality. The text embodies the concept of new-historicism which defines the literary work as producing representations of reality into an imaginary object. According to this concept, the text is ‘over determining’ in nature and it is a product of certain signifying practices, whose source and referent is history itself. The literary work is the product of a certain Produced representation of reality into an imaginary Object. ‘The textual real’ is related to the historical reality, not as an imaginary transposition of it, but as the product of certain signifying practices, whose source and referent is, in the last instance history itself.