POLYPHONIC VISUALITY AND FEMINIST RE-IMAGINATION IN THE PALACE OF ILLUSIONS: A PERFORMATIVE NARRATIVE APPROACH

This paper examines The Palace of Illusions as a feminist reimagination of the Mahabharata through the lens of polyphonic visuality and performative narrative. It explores how the novel constructs multiple female voices that challenge patriarchal epic traditions and reframe mythic history through embodied experience. Drawing on feminist narratology and performance theory, the study analyzes how voice, memory, and visual imagination function as acts of narrative performance. Draupadi’s perspective, alongside other marginalized female subjectivities, creates a dialogic space that resists singular authority. The paper argues that this polyphonic approach transforms the epic into a living, contested narrative shaped by gendered perception, visual consciousness, and performative storytelling.