Skip to content
1981
  1. Home
  2. A-Z Publications
  3. Studies in Comics
  4. Volume 14, Issue 2
  5. Article
Volume 14, Issue 2
  • ISSN: 2040-3232
  • E-ISSN: 2040-3240

Abstract

Forests have always occupied a significant position as places of exile, transformation and retreat in the epics, myths and folklores that are popular in India. A journey into the forest, as depicted in most of these narratives, is often deployed as a metaphor for epistemological pursuits and also symbolizes a peregrination into the subconscious or the inner self. The graphic novel (2019) is a joint creative venture by the Indian graphic novelist Amruta Patil and mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik, in which they borrow a thin thread of the story from and weave layers of Puranic tales, Vedic philosophy, feminist perspectives and ecological consciousness to create a rich tapestry of metaphors and meanings. (‘of the forest’) is a graphic retelling of the life of the Indian sage Yajnavalkya, his wives, Katyayani and Maitreyi, and of his disciple, Gargi. The forest is not a mere exotic location or an ideal backdrop in which the story of the sage and the three women unfolds. As the title denotes, the forestscape assumes a central role in this graphic narrative and hence it is pertinent to looking into how the forest shapes and is shaped by the narrative. The article hence proposes that the forest is imagined and visualized as a heterotopia in this graphic text. It brings Yajnavalkya’s unscholarly wife Katyayani to the forefront and weaves a story through her words and imagination. The article also strives to foreground the liminal and gendered spaces represented in the narrative. The article therefore offers a critical reading of and explores the spatial dimensions represented in it.

© 2023 Intellect Ltd
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/stic_00108_1
2024-08-28
2025-01-20
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Ashraf, Kazi K. (2013), The Hermit’s Hut: Architecture and Asceticism in India, Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Blunt, Alison and Gillian, Rose (1994), Writing Women and Space: Colonial and Postcolonial Geographies, New York: Guilford Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Bourdieu, Pierre (1984), Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. Counihan, Carole (2000), The Anthropology of Food and Body: Gender, Meaning and Power, New York: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. Datta, Anindita (ed.) (2021), Gender, Space and Agency in India: Exploring Regional Genderscapes, London: Taylor and Francis.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Foucault, Michel (1997), ‘Of other spaces: Utopias and heterotopias’, in N. Leach (ed.), Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 330–36.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Gennep, Van (1960), The Rites of Passage, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Hetherington, Kevin (1997), The Badlands of Modernity: Heterotopia and Social Ordering, London: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Kumar, Priya (2015), ‘The environmentalism of the hungry tide’, in S. Slovic, S. Rangarajan and V. Sarveswaran (eds), Ecocriticism of the Global South, London: Lexington Books, pp. 11–34.
     [Google Scholar]
  10. Lefebvre, Henri (1991), The Production of Space (trans. D. Nicholson-Smith), Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Löw, Setha M. and Lawrence-Zúñiga, Denise (eds) (2003), ‘Locating culture’, The Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating Culture, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 1–48.
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Massey, Doreen (1994), Space, Place and Gender, Cambridge: Polity Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. McDowell, Linda (1999), Gender, Identity and Place: Understanding Feminist Geographies, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. Nayar, Pramod K. (2016), The Indian Graphic Novel: Nation, History and Critique, London: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. Ostriker, Alicia (1982), ‘The thieves of language: Women poets and revisionist mythmaking’, Signs, 8:1, pp. 68–90, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3173482. Accessed 16 December 2022.
     [Google Scholar]
  16. Patil, Amruta and Pattanaik, Devdutt (2019), Aranyaka: Book of the Forest, Chennai: Tranquebar.
     [Google Scholar]
  17. Shortt, Harriet (2015), ‘Liminality, space and the importance of “transitory dwelling places” at work’, Human Relations, SAGE, 68:4, pp. 633–58, https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726714536938.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. Struver, Anke (2004), ‘Boundaries under construction: Linking body politics to space’, Espace, populations, sociétés, 1:1, pp. 121–30, https://doi.org/10.4000/eps.558.
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Turner, Victor W. (1967), ‘Betwixt and between: The liminal period in Rites de Passage’, in The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual, London: Cornell University Press, pp. 93–111.
     [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1386/stic_00108_1
Loading
‘Inside this membrane is Us. Beyond the membrane, Them’: Spatiality in Amruta Patil and Devdutt Pattanaik’s Aranyaka: Book of the Forest
Studies in Comics 14, 213 (2023); https://doi.org/10.1386/stic_00108_1
/content/journals/10.1386/stic_00108_1
/content/journals/10.1386/stic_00108_1
Loading

Data & Media loading...

  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): forest; gender; graphic novel; grove; heterotopia; liminal; membrane

Most Cited Most Cited RSS feed

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error
Please enter a valid_number test