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Abstract
This qualitative research critically explores the intersection of multiple historical, socio-cultural and political discourses in The Forty Rules of Love. For this purpose, the current study has been conducted through the theoretical perspective of postmodern historiographic metafiction with the analytical method of intertextuality. Early on, the novel has been studied with respect to fascination for Rumi and spirituality. However, the current research tends to analyze the novel in the light of postmodernism that encourages the syncretic mixing of innovation and tradition, and past and present into a unified whole, through the lens of intertexuality. The researchable issue is to investigate how the writer blends history into fiction and what sorts of techniques she employs to formulate historiographic metafictional nature of the text by intermingling of various other texts/discourses leading to a unique blend of multi-layered meaning residing in a single text. The study focuses on the contribution of the form of the text towards the production of meaning in terms of plurality and the elicitation of ideological discourses underlying the main schema. Specifically, this study aims to ascertain the outcome of intertextual fusion of historical and postmodern narrative in the novel and its important role in the elicitation of multi-tiered meanings, beliefs and underlying ideologies embedded in the text of the novel. This study finds that, as an amalgam of multiple voices and discourses, The Forty Rules of Love is a critical commentary not just upon a historical faction of Sufi tradition, but also on the ideology of Islam as a peaceful religion, promoting religious tolerance and giving liberty of righteous thoughts and actions.
Keywords: postmodernism, historiographic metafiction, intertextuality, historical, socio-cultural and political discourse
Introduction
Owing to its comprehensive and inclusive nature, the term intertextuality can be used to re-contextualize the gamut of corpus, such as, literary, non-literary, operative, informative, expressive, fictional, nonfictional, historical, anterior, posterior, visual, verbal and written text. The definition of intertextuality is highly elusive because of its tendency to incorporate and evolve with new trends, amalgamations and innovations. Simply put, it can be compared to a collage as a work of art and in terms of literature; it is better known as a discourse of multiplicity and plurality of meaning, ideas, beliefs and realities. In this regard, Kristeva (1980)...