Literary Realism and Narrative Techniques in Fakir Mohan Senapati’s Six Acres and a Third

Abstract

Literary realism was a trend originated in the writings of French authors in the nineteenth century. Realistic novels represented contemporary society and life ‘as they were’. Like naturalistic writers, they dealt with a special selection of subject matter and a special way of rendering those materials. Realistic novels held a mirror to the society revealing the most ordinary and natural of human experiences. They embraced the linear and omniscient narration to encode their narrative. This paper looks at how Senapati, a late nineteenth-century Oriya novelist, Fakir Mohan Senapathi redefines realism in his novel, Six Acres and a Third. Unlike the naturalistic mode of Mulk Raj Anand, Senapati’s realism is complex rather than simply mimetic or descriptive. For him it is much more than a plain unadorned representation of the mundane written in plain language. Rather, he embodies a critical vision in its narrative style. This study also attempts to look into those features of the narrative that Senapati employs to achieve this critical vision. The modes and techniques of the narrative are closely looked at to see how the narrative unfolds various subtexts and histories.