Date of Award

2021

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

Second Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Portugal, Jose Alberto

Area of Concentration

English

Abstract

In this thesis, I explore the overlaps of literature and anthropology in the works of two novelist-anthropologists, José María Arguedas and Amitav Ghosh. Arguedas is a Peruvian ethnologist, folklorist, and writer while Ghosh is an Indian sociologist, historian, anthropologist, and writer. Their novels, Deep Rivers (1958) and The Calcutta Chromosome (1995), respectively, focus on matters concerned with cultural transformations, the representation of the subaltern or the Other, and marginalized communities and histories. Because of the authors’ backgrounds as both novelists and anthropologists and the anthropological concerns present in their literary work, I became interested in studying how the two fields inform each other and overlap in the authors’ works. How do their understandings of anthropology inform their literary styles? What does the novel form offer them that ethnography does not? Where can one find the overlaps of anthropology and literature in their texts? I explore these questions in my analysis of Arguedas’ Deep Rivers and Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome.

Download

Share

COinS