Allegorizing Nation Building in Fiction: An Analysis of Mumtaz Shahnawaz’s The Heart Divided

Abstract

The present paper is a New Historicist analysis of Mumtaz Shahnawaz's novel The Heart Divided (1957). Keeping in view the theoretical postulates of Stephen Greenblatt, the paper analyzes the literary text in conjunction with the author's life and time to evaluate how the different prevailing political discourses impacted the text. During the turbulent times of the Partition of the Subcontinent, the significance of the social and political forces that prompted the author to write the novel cannot be denied. Shahnawaz herself was a political activist during the Independence Movement so she closely witnessed the process of nation building and the emergence of the concept of Two Nation Theory so she incorporates these details in her fictional work. As a New Historicist study, this paper assumes that the selected fictional text has been shaped by the time and place in which it was produced and that it reflects the time and place it is set so the study explores the cultural forces surrounding the text and infusing meaning to it.