Self-reflexivity in Fiction: A Study through Selected Fictions of Fakir Mohan Senapati

Abstract

This paper studies  Fakir Mohan Senapati’s use of self-reflexivity in his fictions taking his two meta-fictional short stories namely ‘Aja Nati Katha’( Grandpa Grandson Dialogue)  and  Samalochana ( Criticism) and his most critically attended novel Six Acres and a Third as its framework. Senapati’s engagement with unique narrative techniques and fictional devices which can be seen as contemporary and post-modernist takes him beyond the boundaries of nineteenth century Indian realist fiction. Written during the last few decades of the nineteenth century, when the world was ignorant of the phenomenon of literary theory, Senapati’s novels and short stories demonstrate an unusual kind of complexity that assign him the position of a canonical writer in Indian literature. The paper will  analyze how through the use of such narrative techniques Senapati creates a reading experience very similar to a postmodern text,  while carving out a space for realist fiction which faced resistance from the conservative Odia reading public of the times.