SUBVERSION OF DOMINANT SOCIO-CULTURAL CONSTRUCTS IN KING HENRY IV: A POSTMODERNIST-DECONSTRUCTIONIST STUDY

The “seeming” “color” of the dominant narrative in Shakespeare’s play, King Henry IV is to strengthen and reinforce the conventional socio-cultural constructs like duty, honor, glory, nobility, war, peace and patriotism as absolutes, but this apparent dominant narrative is subverted and undermined by the existence of alternative micro-narratives, which challenge and expose the reality of these absolutes as socio-cultural constructs invented by the status quo and the dominant ideology. These alternative micro-narratives highlight the inherent contradictions involving these socio-cultural constructs and human subjectivities, thereby showing them as split and dispersed, their alleged unification, as merely a pack of myths and lies. The current study means to show that the text of the play manifests postmodernist and deconstructionist perspectivism, pluralism and multiplicity. This applies both to the text and the subjectivities of the characters. The study is to be undertaken in the light of postmodernist and deconstructionist theoretical framework