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Resource type: Journal Article Language: en: English Peer reviewed BibTeX citation key: Banerjee2019 Email resource to friend View all bibliographic details |
Categories: General Keywords: "Sita’s Ramayana", Adaptation, Aesthetics, Arni. Samhita, Art, Chitrakar. Moyna, Folklore, India, Intermediality, Literature, Performance Creators: Banerjee Collection: Gnosis Special Issue |
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Abstract |
With the onset of globalisation, folk practices as well as the overall idea of media and entertainment have been the subject to alteration. This paper is an attempt to explore the interrelations between folk practices and how they are re-presented in media. It is of utmost necessity to preserve the various folk art forms bordering on obsolescence since its importance is more than an art form and it forms a part of cultural identity of a community. In India too, several initiatives have been taken up for the revival of the folk arts. Recently, folk arts have been adapted in the form of graphic novels in India. Patachitra or patua art or scroll painting is a community based, performative dying folk art form of rural West Bengal. Being rooted in the tradition, it upholds the cultural identity and values of the Bengali people with its painted scrolls and accompanying songs which capture the mythical tales, significant global phenomena, burning social issues and the quintessentially Bengali way of life. With the gradual loss of patua art form in contemporary Bengali community, patua artists have felt the need to adapt the traditional art form in contemporary narrative. One of the narratives that has become most suited for this endeavour is that of graphic novel. The graphic novel, a global phenomenon and patachitra, a specimen of folk art, together create a new syncretic globalised space for interaction between local and global. The amalgamation of patua art and the aesthetics of graphic novel not only helps in recording the art form but also enables it to reach out from a single community to the global readership. Thus it leads to the creation of an innovative graphic narrative design. This paper intends to establish how successfully the tenets of the aesthetics of patua art retain its originality after being amalgamated with the aesthetics of the graphic novel. In order to illustrate my argument, I have analysed with respect to the graphic novel Sita’s Ramayana by Samhita Arni and Moyna Chitrakar.
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