From Sacred Narrative to Negotiated Narrative: Reimagining Mythology in Contemporary Fiction

Abstract

Contemporary mythological fiction revisits inherited narratives by transforming familiar characters, reworking episodes, and foregrounding perspectives that have received limited attention in earlier tellings. This paper examines how selected works of contemporary Indian and global fiction negotiate mythological traditions through changes in characterization, narrative structure, and moral emphasis. Using a qualitative comparative textual approach, the study considers eleven novels: Anand Neelakantan’s Asura: Tale of the Vanquished and Ajaya: Roll of the Dice; Amish Tripathi’s The Immortals of Meluha; Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Palace of Illusions; Ashwin Sanghi’s The Krishna Key; Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad; Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls; Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles and Circe; Joanne Harris’s The Gospel of Loki; and Jennifer Saint’s Ariadne. The analysis is organized around three dimensions: degree of narrative transformation, contemporary social relevance, and narrative perspective. It asks how these works revise inherited representations of heroism, villainy, gender, authority, identity, and marginalization. The paper argues that mythological retellings create interpretive space between inherited narratives and contemporary concerns; however, a change in narrator or characterization does not automatically dismantle the social and ideological structures represented in a story. The cultural and moral significance of these novels is therefore approached as a textual possibility rather than a demonstrated effect on readers.