Abstract: Just as postmodernism dismantles the concept of absolute truth, Linda Hutcheon’s concept of the “narcissistic narrative” exemplifies the postmodern undermining of prior traditions. The need for a new way of looking at older historical forms makes Midnight’s Children a prime candidate for analysis in terms of narcissistic narrative, providing an example that explores new views of history. Based on three aspects of narcissistic narrative: the self-aware narratorial style, the reader participation invited by the text, and the new rules of literature invoked with the employment of narcissistic narrative, this paper intends to interpret the historical writing in Midnight’s Children through analyzing the subversion of traditional view of history, narrative form and form of truth carried out by the novel. Saleem Sinai, the narrator of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, exemplifies narcissistic narrative, inviting the reader to participate in creating and discovering an alternative to the typical historical traditions of historical truth as merely recorded facts：memory and the process of recalling memories produces individual histories that overlap some aspects of recorded history yet remain unique, individual versions of history. This paper demonstrates that Rushdie undermines the conventional ideas of history and posits a multiple versions of history that are comprised of a chutnified mixture of individual memory and recorded fact, which is a typical post-modern philosophy of history.

Keywords: postmodern; narcissistic narrative; self-consciousness; memory; history; Midnight’s Children; Salman Rushdie

摘要： 正如后现代主义消解了绝对真理的概念，琳达•哈钦“自恋叙事”的概念体现了后现代对传统叙事方式的颠覆。《午夜之子》是典型的自恋叙事文本，它提供了探索历史新观念的最佳例证。本论文依据自恋叙事的3个方面：自我意识的叙事风格、文本邀请读者的参与、自恋叙事引发的文学新规则，对《午夜之子》中的历史书写进行阐释，分析该文本对传统历史观、叙事形式和真理形式的颠覆，以期证明鲁西迪在该文本中颠覆了传统的历史观，预设了多种不同的历史版本，这些不同的历史版本由个人的历史和文字记载的历史共同组成，它们在某些方面是重合的，但却保留了其独特性，是历史的个人版本，是像酸辣酱一样的混合物。这是一种典型的后现代历史哲学观。

关键词: 后现代, 自恋叙事, 自我意识, 记忆, 历史观, 《午夜之子》, 鲁西迪