Blending the Poetics and Politics in Ondaatje's The English Patient

Abstract

This research entitled “Blending the Poetics and Politics in Ondaatje's The English Patient” explores the literary elements to show their relationship in developing the theme of postcolonial issues in the novel The English Patient. The novel is an attempt to represent a series of postnational, borderless societies. By portraying an existence outside of traditional forms of family, class and nation, depicting scenes of communal between strangers, revealing human kindness which crosses boundaries of colour, Ondaatje suggests that this kind of social structures are possible only in the postcolonial world. To develop this issue, he uses the technique of intertextuality to put the issues across different interrelated texts. Interruption and mediated narrative function to have the notion of rewriting the history.