Indian Literature

Download or read book The Idea of Indian Literature written by Preetha Mani and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-15 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indian literature is not a corpus of texts or literary concepts from India, argues Preetha Mani, but a provocation that seeks to resolve the relationship between language and literature, written in as well as against English. Examining canonical Hindi and Tamil short stories from the crucial decades surrounding decolonization, Mani contends that Indian literature must be understood as indeterminate, propositional, and reflective of changing dynamics between local, regional, national, and global readerships. In The Idea of Indian Literature, she explores the paradox that a single canon can be written in multiple languages, each with their own evolving relationships to one another and to English. Hindi, representing national aspirations, and Tamil, epitomizing the secessionist propensities of the region, are conventionally viewed as poles of the multilingual continuum within Indian literature. Mani shows, however, that during the twentieth century, these literatures were coconstitutive of one another and of the idea of Indian literature itself. The writers discussed here—from short-story forefathers Premchand and Pudumaippittan to women trailblazers Mannu Bhandari and R. Chudamani—imagined a pan-Indian literature based on literary, rather than linguistic, norms, even as their aims were profoundly shaped by discussions of belonging unique to regional identity. Tracing representations of gender and the uses of genre in the shifting thematic and aesthetic practices of short vernacular prose writing, the book offers a view of the Indian literary landscape as itself a field for comparative literature.

Download or read book The Vintage Book of Modern Indian Literature written by Amit Chaudhuri and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2004-11-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years American readers have been thrilling to the work of such Indian writers as Salman Rushdie and Vikram Seth. Now this extravagant and wonderfully discerning anthology unfurls the full diversity of Indian literature from the 1850s to the present, presenting today’s brightest talents in the company of their distinguished forbearers and likely heirs. The thirty-eight authors collected by novelist Amit Chaudhuri write not only in English but also in Hindi, Bengali, and Urdu. They include Rabindranath Tagore, arguably the first international literary celebrity, chronicling the wistful relationship between a village postal inspector and a servant girl, and Bibhuti Bhushan Banerjee, represented by an excerpt from his classic novel about an impoverished Bengali childhood, Pather Panchali. Here, too, are selections from Nirad C. Chaudhuri’s Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, R. K. Narayan’s The English Teacher, and Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children alongside a high-spirited nonsense tale, a drily funny account of a pre-Partition Muslim girlhood, and a Bombay policier as gripping as anything by Ed McBain. Never before has so much of the subcontinent’s writing been made available in a single volume.

Download or read book Literary Indians written by Angela Calcaterra and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2018-10-26 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although cross-cultural encounter is often considered an economic or political matter, beauty, taste, and artistry were central to cultural exchange and political negotiation in early and nineteenth-century America. Part of a new wave of scholarship in early American studies that contextualizes American writing in Indigenous space, Literary Indians highlights the significance of Indigenous aesthetic practices to American literary production. Countering the prevailing notion of the "literary Indian" as a construct of the white American literary imagination, Angela Calcaterra reveals how Native people's pre-existing and evolving aesthetic practices influenced Anglo-American writing in precise ways. Indigenous aesthetics helped to establish borders and foster alliances that pushed against Anglo-American settlement practices and contributed to the discursive, divided, unfinished aspects of American letters. Focusing on tribal histories and Indigenous artistry, Calcaterra locates surprising connections and important distinctions between Native and Anglo-American literary aesthetics in a new history of early American encounter, identity, literature, and culture.

Download or read book A History of Indian Literature written by Sisir Kumar Das and published by Sahitya Akademi. This book was released on 2005 with total page 856 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Volume, The First To Appear In The Ten Volume Series Published By The Sahitya Akademi, Deals With A Fascinating Period, Conspicuous By The Growing Complexities Of Multilingualism, Changes In The Modes Of Literary Transmission And In The Readership And Also By The Dominance Of The English Language As An Instrument Of Power In Indian Society.

Download or read book The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature written by Amit Chaudhuri and published by Pan Macmillan Adult. This book was released on 2002 with total page 638 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Translations from Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, Tamil and the South sit alongside writing in English, bringing to light the greatest and most engaging writers from India's recent history. With introductions to the writers and their work, this is an electic and enlightening anthology of Indian writing.

Download or read book Indian Literature and the World written by Rossella Ciocca and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-05-09 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about the most vibrant yet under-studied aspects of Indian writing today. It examines multilingualism, current debates on postcolonial versus world literature, the impact of translation on an “Indian” literary canon, and Indian authors’ engagement with the public sphere. The essays cover political activism and the North-East Tribal novel; the role of work in the contemporary Indian fictional imaginary; history as felt and reconceived by the acclaimed Hindi author Krishna Sobti; Bombay fictions; the Dalit autobiography in translation and its problematic international success; development, ecocriticism and activist literature; casteism and access to literacy in the South; and gender and diaspora as dominant themes in writing from and about the subcontinent. Troubling Eurocentric genre distinctions and the split between citizen and subject, the collection approaches Indian literature from the perspective of its constant interactions between private and public narratives, thereby proposing a method of reading Indian texts that goes beyond their habitual postcolonial identifications as “national allegories”.

Download or read book Encyclopaedia of Indian Literature written by Amaresh Datta and published by Sahitya Akademi. This book was released on 1987 with total page 1038 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Major Activity Of The Sahitya Akademi Is The Preparation Of An Encyclopaedia Of Indian Literature. The Venture, Covering Twenty-Two Languages Of India, Is The First Of Its Kind. Written In English, The Encyclopaedia Gives A Comprehensive Idea Of The Growth And Development Of Indian Literature. The Entries On Authors, Books And General Topics Have Been Tabulated By The Concerned Advisory Boards And Finalised By A Steering Committee. Hundreds Of Writers All Over The Country Contributed Articles On Various Topics. The Encyclopaedia, Planned As A Six-Volume Project, Has Been Brought Out. The Sahitya Akademi Embarked Upon This Project In Right Earnest In 1984. The Efforts Of The Highly Skilled And Professional Editorial Staff Started Showing Results And The First Volume Was Brought Out In 1987. The Second Volume Was Brought Out In 1988, The Third In 1989, The Fourth In 1991, The Fifth In 1992, And The Sixth Volume In 1994. All The Six Volumes Together Include Approximately 7500 Entries On Various Topics, Literary Trends And Movements, Eminent Authors And Significant Works. The First Three Volume Were Edited By Prof. Amaresh Datta, Fourth And Fifth Volume By Mohan Lal And Sixth Volume By Shri K.C.Dutt.