A Folk Tale Analysis

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Folklore Tradition in Manoj Das’s Selected Fiction Folklore is the traditional beliefs and stories of a group of people. It serves as a symbolic language which portrays the livelihood of the rustic people. Verbal folklore is the oral tradition with specific genres such as proverbs, riddles, lullabies, prose narratives and songs. The non verbal modes are dances, games etc. There are also composite a performing arts such as street magic, representing every aspect of city, town and village life. As Manoj Das is an Indian writer, he has shown strong affinity to typical Indian tradition of story-telling. Folktales are oral in tradition. They came down the generations by word of mouth. Some of the tales that today’s grandmothers tell their grandchildren are centuries old. A.K. Ramanujan tells that the story “Crossing a River, Losing a self” which he has heard in childhood, is composed by the great Indian …show more content…

Hence, Manoj Das’s way of telling the story not only gains the momentary submission of Dr. Batstone but the reader too. The Stories discussed in this paper have strong oral narrative style and supernatural elements as a characteristic of folktales. In the Previous century, folklore was looked upon as the source of all knowledge. As a result many researches are being done on folklore today. Though Manoj Das’s short stories bring to light the culture of a particular group of people, one finds cultural similarities beyond geographical polarities and this is exactly what folklore is about. Work Cited Primary Source: Das, Manoj. Selected Fiction. Delhi: Penguin Books, 2001. Secondary Source: Barnet, Sylvan.(Ed). A Short Guide to Writing about Literature. Boston Toronto; Brown and Company, 1968. Raja.P. Many Worlds of Manoj Das. Delhi: B.R. Publishing Distributors (P) Ltd.,

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