International Journal of Language & Literature

History and Myth in Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses
Daniela Carstea

Abstract
Two of the most conspicuous and also widely discussed directions in reading Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses are the historical and the mythical components. Some critics maintain that The Satanic Verses is, allegedly, a revisioning of the foundation myth of Islam. Rushdie himself, in a commentary on the novel, acknowledged that it is based on extensive historical research. Here we may bring the discussion onto a more theoretical ground and consider the status of the fictional text. What is the position of the referents as regards fiction? The strongly sustained assumption is that the fictional worlds, created by fictional worlds, do not have referents, nothing can really be interpreted in a literal way. So, The Satanic Verses is only partly historical. The direction upon which I shall dwell is the mythical one. And here, The Satanic Verses could be read as “a masterful evocation of a male midlife crisis”, imbued with archetypal patterns, in magical realist terms.

Full Text: PDF      DOI: 10.15640/ijll.v10n2a2