Abstract 103
Ancy Bay.P C
Pulp
Villainy: Anti-‘Ideal’ and the Cultural
Dissidence; an Essay in Malayalam Janapriya Novel
Abstract
This
paper deals with two interrelated issues involved in the formation of popular
literature in Malayalam. The First discusses the trajectories of informed
literary criticism in which the writing named after ‘janapriyam’ or painkili
were (dis)qualified as an ‘anti-ideal’ vis-à-vis the respected or canonical
modes of literary production/craft. By the late 1960s, a new category
‘janapriyam’ started moving across all major literary domains. The term became current in common use often
along with the suffixes such as sāhithyam, sangītham, kaļa, nāţakam and Cinema.
The main focus of this section will be the conceptual anatomy of this new
category; janapriyam, with a special reference to the literary genre, the
‘Novel’ or more precisely, the ‘janapriya’ or ‘painkili’ novel. It will also argue that the unprecedented
successes of janapriya type texts help us to think of the possibility of an
extra-canonical cultural protest participated by quotidian readership and
less-preferred/known writers. The second is a brief survey of the ‘anti-ideal’
or the negative characters from the early janapriya novels written by the
famous writer Muttathu Varkey (1917-1989). Just as his ideal-typical heroes and
heroines, his villains also show certain definite traits of becoming a type.
However, the villain type is generally represented as inherently vulnerable,
bound to be defeated /repented, frequently acting at the aegis of some or the
other procedural dilemma. Unlike many of his celebrated procedures and
contemporaries, villainy for Varkey is an achieved (not an ascribed),
conjectural status. The ‘anti-ideal’ in
the early janapriya novels was not so distant, structural and towering. It was,
in fact, much familiar (and hence, familial) than ‘the ideal’ or ‘the heroic’.
This paper will make an attempt to trace a set of extra-textual connotations
for the villains of Muttathu Varkey
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