A New Historicist Analysis of Ahmed Ali's Twilight in Delhi

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to shed light on the novel Twilight in Delhi by Ahmed Ali through the lens of New Historicism which highlights the connection between the literature and the historical period of the work creation. Holding the background of early twentieth-century Delhi, the novel portrays the social and political turn of the Mughal empire and the British rule. The method used for this research paper is qualitative method with descriptive approach. This paper seeks to determine how the text portrays a decaying Delhi through comparing the narrative representation of the social relations and contexts with the documented histories and cultural text from the period of British colonialism and the resulting social crises for a society as depicted by Ali. The analysis of the novel and new historicist approach leads to the key argument, suggesting that Ali points at a postcolonial disintegration of the city and its decaying culture as a metaphor for the breakdown of the civilization under colonial rule. Consequently, this paper affirms that Twilight in Delhi is not only a literary piece, but also a historical account that opens a window into the cultural and political climate of the period. Hopefully the findings of this research will help the future researchers to study the novel from the historical, social and political context.