Devdutt Pattanaik's The Pregnant King as A Postmodern Mini-Narrative

<p>The Pregnant King, written by<br>Devdutt Pattanaik in 2008, is a novel that is<br>lauded for its unique narration and plot.<br>There are many elements in the novel with<br>regard to narrative style that can be<br>analyzed to arrive at a closer meaning of the<br>text. This research work will explore<br>Devdutt's novel as a postmodern mininarrative. The Pregnant King is based on<br>The Mahabharata and has traditional tropes<br>and elements, but the novel takes a unique<br>approach to these elements. This research<br>will show how this approach makes the<br>novel a mini-narrative. This article will<br>discuss how the gender-based and societal<br>binary oppositions within the text mark the<br>move away from metanarratives that rely on<br>such binaries to provide meaning. It will<br>also discuss the inherent intertextuality and<br>hyperreality as important feature that<br>juxtaposes grand themes and character arcs<br>with more ordinary, unheroic ones. The<br>paper will attempt to analyze the novel as a<br>postmodern mini-narrative by using the<br>concepts of Lyotard and Baudrillard.</p>