Girish Karnad : History and Folklore

Contents: Preface. 1. Introduction. 2. Tughlaq. 3. Hayavadana. 4. Tale-Danda. 5. The Dreams of Tipu Sultan. 6. Flowers. 7. Broken Images. 8. Wedding Album. 9. Bibliography. Index.

The development of history as the written discourse came into existence for displaying history of man and his origin as home sapiens. Anthropologically, the incidents and events in the past were interpreted through myths, folk tales and the oral tradition. The development of nature and the development of history remain side by side and there is also a close relationship between nature and folklore. In India there one hardly sees the annals and the chronological arrangement of history except the tradition which existed and exists in the folk-memory of the people enmasse, History is not cyclic but predominantly linear while folk-memory is cyclic and dynamic. Karnad uses the sources of history and folklore in his plays just to reveal the sociocentric matrixes an its impact on human relationships. The present book apart from introduction includes nine subtitles out of its seven core chapters. The three historical plays, Tughlaq, Tale-Danta and The Dreams of Tipu Sultan bring into being the historicity of history, vis-a-vis, the social, political and humanitarian concerns. Tughlaq qith its historical facts and histrionics, explicates, some political issues of Nehruvian era. Tale-Danda with the charismatic personality of Basavanna analyses the social and religious reforms. The dreams of Tipu Sultan brings into light the frescoes of history in order to show the distinction between Indian sense of tradition and the written scroll of history. The plays such Hayavadana and Flowers represent the folkloreand the oral tradition of literature. Female-centric in their ideologies, these plays reveal the complicated world of human relationships and the cultural configurations. The remaining two plays, Broken Images and Wedding Album disperse the academic and social matrix. Broken images as a dramatic monologue questions the case of plagiaristic disputes of a literary text and the distinction between English and Indian languages, wedding works out the fibrous motifs and deals with the issues of social disintegration and the evasiveness of cultural values.