Vikram Seth’s Poetics of Pastiche

Vikram Seth is a critical enigma. He is recognized as one of the most important Indian Anglophone authors of his generation; his individual works have been widely reviewed, yet his work has rarely been approached as a whole and remains surprisingly understudied. Perhaps the chief reason for the paucity of critical response to the full compass of Seth’s work is his disregard for intellectual fashion. Indeed, Seth is at once very popular and deliberately unfashionable. His literary affiliations are conservative; seemingly uninterested in any revisionary narrative, he is equally unconcerned by the interpenetration of cultures in our globalized world, representing assimilation rather than cultural difference. He defies the expectations of both postcolonial and world literature; therefore, to discuss his critical neglect is to shed light on the limitations of these labels. As the most thorough attempt to map a general poetics in Seth’s work, this study - the first of its kind on this writer- develops a new critical methodology to capture the nuances of Seth’s literary strategies. It provides scholars and students insight into the key features of Seth’s work and uncovers a consistent authorial strategy running through his seemingly disconnected body of work, namely a systematic use of intertextual practices.

Mélanie Heydari is a lecturer in the Department of French and Comparative Literature of Barnard College, Columbia University, USA.