SPATIAL THEORY: USE OF SPACE AS A METAPHOR IN THE NOVEL, SEVEN MOONS OF MAALI ALMEIDA BY SHEHAN KARUNATHILAKA.

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.