CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH LITERATURE: A STUDY OF FEMININE VOICE AND MYTH RETELLING IN KAVITA KANE’S LANKA’S PRINCESS

When ancient myths are retold from silenced perspectives, contemporary English-language literature is transformed. Mainly due to Indian English fiction being animated by mythological revisionism as a potent narrative strategy for interrogating patriarchal, moral, and cultural binaries. Kavita Kane’s Lanka’s Princess (2017) underscores this shift by reexamining the Ramayana from Surpanakha’s perspective, a character already demonized in traditional texts. Kavita Kane’s novel engages with a range of recent literary concerns, from feminist reinterpretation of the past to identity politics and ethical relativism – and, in doing so, makes its own contribution to the shifting progress of English literature. The study examines closely selected textual passages to establish an arch of development by which the movement from mythologizing to humanistic representation assists us in interpreting character motivation.