East of Delhi
Multilingual Literary Culture and World Literature
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc
Published:11th Sep '23
Should be back in stock very soon
Like many societies across the world, the region of Awadh in North India has been bilingual throughout its history. But literary histories of the region often indicate otherwise. In the early twentieth century, colonists recodified literary histories separately according to language, detached written literature from oral literature, and reimagined the entangled literary past according to their own ideas about language, literature, and Indian history. At the same time, multilingualism remained resilient and acquired new uses. East of Delhi: Multilingual Literary Culture and World Literature examines literature produced, practiced, and circulated in and out of North India, focusing on the region of Awadh, from the beginning of recorded vernacular literature in the late fourteenth century to the colonial era of the early twentieth century. This book considers texts in a wide range of genres-courtly, devotional, and popular-composed in the main languages of the region: Hindavi, Persian, Brajbhasha, Urdu. Individual chapters focus on narratives, devotional song-poems and didactic works, local courtly literary practices, and multilingual education as recorded in biographical dictionaries-anthologies. Author Francesca Orsini suggests that this multilingual and multi-genre approach is better suited to capturing the texture, complexity, and dynamics of literature in the world, and of literary history, than approaches that focus only on global circulation or models that draw centers and peripheries on a single global map.
Orsini's book is a major intervention in the current conversation on world literature. She makes a powerful argument for a different approach that mediates between cosmopolitanism and vernacularity, between script and orality, and focuses on forms of transmission which cannot be reduced to translation. An outstanding achievement. * Galin Tihanov, George Steiner Professor of Comparative Literature, Queen Mary University of London *
A breathtaking book that reveals a bejewelled literary world formed over centuries of multilingual contact on the northern plains of the subcontinent. Awadh, in Orsini's deft hands, is not just a region lost in the scramble for empires, nation-making and global worlding, but a vibrant cultural mesh that gives new meaning to the very idea of world literature. Exploring orature, script, performance, devotional poetics, instructional genres, and communities of taste in several languages and dialects, the author paints a vitalist picture of literature as a way of life. Orsini's book pluralizes our understanding of both 'world' and 'literature'. A treasure trove of insights from South Asia's eminent literary historian. * Debjani Ganguly, University of Virginia, editor of The Cambridge History of World Literature *
In this strikingly original work, Francesca Orsini challenges many of the terms of current postcolonial and world literary debates. Her probing account of the rich multilingual complexity of North Indian culture moves beyond the binaries of center and periphery, cosmopolitanism and localism, and beyond the unities enshrined in terms such as 'the world,' 'the vernacular,' and even 'literature' itself. Both deeply grounded and genuinely ground-breaking, this book should be read by anyone interested in thinking freshly about the worldliness of local cultures. * David Damrosch, Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard University *
It provides detailed and comprehensive coverage for those engaging with the provisions of the DSM Directive, and it will be of interest to both academics and practitioners, including legislators and courts across the EU with an interest in EU copyright harmonisation, reform and the DSM Directive. * Heyleigh Bosher, International and Comparative Law Quarterly *
ISBN: 9780197658291
Dimensions: 162mm x 237mm x 24mm
Weight: 544g
312 pages