Disparities in Narrative styles Used by Sinhala Novelists: 1990 - 2020 (A study based on Liyanage Amaraparachchi, Eric Ilayapaarachchi, Keerthi walisarage and Saman Wickremarachchi's novels)

Abstract

The novel has a unique place among other literature genres. It can be noted that the origin of the Sinhala novel took place at the beginning of the 20th century as a result of the gradual evolution of the classical storytelling in Sri Lanka, the inspiration of the western novel art and the academic revival that took place in Sri Lanka in the middle of the 19th century. Although the influence of various narrative styles of western literature started in the opening period, the use of Sinhala novelists in their creations, going slightly beyond the realistic method, is more noticeable with the group of novels that comment on the personal character from the 1950s. Siri Gunasinghe's novel Hewanella is a turning point here. Although the majority of Sinhala novels produced in the period of 1960-1990 can be considered as realistic works, the interest shown by novelists in the use of various narrative rules inspired by universal literature is notable in this era. The social and political upheavals and conflicts that took place in the country during the middle half of this period also affected the novel literature in the country. Accordingly, there was an impetus from the social environment itself to reject realism and a conversation about literature that exceeded realism was generated in the society. Western critical concepts or composition rules, which have been used to create Sinhala literature at an experimental level for a long time, seem to be widely used in novelization in the period of 1990 - 2020. The main objective of using novels published in this period as the field of study of this research was to study the impact of those concepts. Under that, the works of selected novelists Liyanage Amarakirthi, Eric Ilayaparachchi, Keerthi Welisarage, Saman Wickramarachchi are investigated in this study. The problem of this research is, what are the descriptive narrative rules depicted in the novels written in the period (1990-2020) to go Accordingly, attention is paid here to the differences in the design rules used by novelists as well as to the multiple narrative rules depicted through a single novel. The main purpose of the research is to identify the differences in the narrative rules and the Western literary influence that influenced the novels written in this period. Under the qualitative research methodology, the methods of using library books and literature survey were used and the research is done using the books of the a fore mentioned designers as the primary source and the critical books of the related criticisms as the secondary sources.