Abstract:
Space, the domain of settings and surroundings of events, characters and
objects in literary narrative, along with other domains (story, character, time
and ideology), constitutes a fictional universe. Space is a semantic construct
built with linguistic structures employed by the literary text. Spaces are
fictional places and locations which provide a topological determination to
events and states in the story. It is distinguished through textual
manifestations. This research investigates the spatial topologies demonstrated
in the text The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunathilaka. The
main objective of the research is to examine how space is used as a metaphor
by Shehan Karunathilaka to represent semantic interpretations. The
methodology of the study is qualitative while the research method is textual
analysis. According to the findings, amongst the spaces, Karunathilaka has
prominently used urban, rural and terrorism spaces as metaphors. The function
of rural metaphors is to illustrate the rural settings, superstition, its authenticity
and lack of corruption. However, through his metaphors of rural spaces, it
depicts rural exoticism. The urban metaphors represent the city life, its hidden
affairs, political inferences and corruption. Finally, Karunathilaka uses the
terrorism as a metaphor to depict the LTTE acts and the political connections
with terrorism. He has used metaphors of places and things of popular urban
and rural spaces to pragmatically denote the Sri Lankan contextual inferences.
In conclusion the urban and terrorist metaphors are highly correlated with the
content of the text. It demonstrates the specific contemporary contextual
speculations.
