Negotiating The Mahabharata as a Trauma Narrative (Published)
The great Indian epic, The Mahabharata inspires us to navigate through the height of joy on winning a battle or a kingdom and the depth of sorrow over loss of life, property and so on. The characters witness the prognosis of their distressing and disturbing lives having immense psychological ramifications. In this research, The Mahabharata will be discussed in the light of various trauma features expounded by Vickroy (2002), Skultans (2007), Arizti (2011) and Baelo-Allue (2012) to examine if the epic, being “a treatise on Artha, on Dharma, and on Kama” (Ganguli, 2006, p. 31), can fit into the scheme of trauma narrative. An in-depth analysis of the epic finds that its narrative accommodates most of the theme-based and technique-based trauma narrative features. Besides, the epic embodies trauma as one of its primary themes. Further, the narrative techniques, such as, hamartia, peripetia, tone, repetitive designation, amplification, flashforward and the use of long expressions, embedded in the narrative of the epic, but are not considered in trauma theories, are found representing the psychological trauma of the characters of the epic effectively, thus contribute to broaden the scope of trauma theories by adding new features.
Citation: Dharmapada Jena (2022) Negotiating The Mahabharata as a Trauma Narrative, European Journal of English Language and Literature Studies, Vol.10, No.3, pp.33-49
Keywords: Narrative turn of trauma, Negotiation., The Mahabharata, Trauma, Trauma narrative