| Abstract: |
VijaydanDetha (1926-2013) is a unique author in contemporary Indian literature, having served over fifty years of his life to retell the oral traditions of rural Rajasthan, in his own language, Rajasthani, into literary short fiction. His fourteen-volume Bataan riPhulwari (Garden of Tales, 19601975) collected and repackaged over eight hundred tales based on village storytelling, bardic and feminine narratives of his native Borunda. In this paper, I will discuss Detha as a place where oral tradition is not only transcripted, but intertextually rewritten, creating a unique narrative form of modernity that does not require the rejection of folklore or the sentimentalizing of folklore. Based on the theorization of intertextuality provided by Julia Kristeva, the re-conceptualization of the text and the author used by Roland Barthes, and the process of cognitive and stylistic alteration which comes with the transition to literacy as developed by Walter J. Ong, this paper contends that the stories of Detha provide a dialogic negotiation between the primary orality and print-based literary modernity. By critically reading Detha'sDuvidha (The Dilemma) and Chouboli, DohariZindagi (Two Lives), and Rijak ki Maryada (The Dignity of Labour), the paper demonstrates that the use of nonsense rhymes, framing, references to the hunkara of the listener and the use of inconclusive conclusions, are intertextual traces that enable Detha to challenge The results imply that the work of Detha provides a useful corrective to the Euro-modern theories of authorship and reductive ideas of Indian folklore, suggesting instead a stratified narrative modernity based in the communal and the communal communing with itself. |
