Interplay Of Horror And Humour In Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress Of Florence

Abstract

The inhuman that sprouts from the human constitutes the Grotesque or the absurdity. All that comprise the humanness or that contribute and complement it constitute the Aesthetics. Salman Rushdie, very effortlessly, exploits this interplay of counterparts to crown his narrative techniques, the internal thematic structures, their symmetrical designs and their forms in composition in his novels. This paper attempts to study the co-existence of the humanness and its counterparts and their contradictory as well as complementary aspects in the episode which depicts the tragi-comic conversation between Akbar and his deaf attendant, Bhakti Ram Jain, about the horrors of becoming an emperor in Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence. In this novel, after crushing down an upstart in Surat and chopping off the head of Rana of Cooch Naheen, Akbar passes through tunnels of hope and despair in seclusion. All his victories remind him about his horrifying experiences of his childhood. His anguish and anger expressed over his ‘lessness’ (EOC 47) of his childhood are counter-balanced by the humour, originating from his deaf attendant Bhakti Ram Jain’s imperial flattery. Here, Akbar’s anger, anguish and despair constitute the Grotesque and the humour flowing from the sincere and the serious flattery of Akbar’s deaf attendant, Bhakti Ram, constitute the Aesthetics. This paper exclusively focuses on this episode to record and analyse the nature of the interplay of these two binaries and the third sphere that pops out of it