Guides to South Asian Literature
Browse books and ebooks on:
A History of Indian Literature in English by
From Ram Mohan Ray to Arundhati Roy, two hundred years of Indian literature in English are covered in this volume, essential for anyone interested in this increasingly important literary tradition. Spanning a period from 1800 to the present, this collection of historical essays covers the canonical Indian poets, novelists, and dramatists writing in English--names like Rudyard Kipling, Rabrindanath Tagore, R.K. Narayan, and Salman Rushdie--as well as lesser-known literary figures--scientists, social reformers, anthropologists--who have made significant contributions to the evolution of Indian literature in English. The essays in this volume are arranged chronologically and are devoted to a single author, a group of authors, or to a genre. The book includes 150 rare and interesting photographs and sketches of writers and their contexts.
Location: Mugar Stacks PR9489.6 .H57 2003Publication Date: 2003
Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Poetry of Mughal India by
This in-depth study of the classical Hindi tradition brings the world of Mughal-era poetry and court culture alive for an English readership. Allison Busch draws on the perspectives of literary, social, and intellectual history to elucidate one of premodern India's most significant textualtraditions, documenting the dramatic rise of a new type of professional Hindi writer while providing critical insight into the motives that animated this literary community and its patrons. Busch examines how riti literature served as an important aesthetic and political resource in the richly multicultural world of Mughal India, and provides, for the first time in a Western language, a detailed study of the fascinating oeuvre of Keshavdas, whose seminal Rasikpriya (Handbook for poetryconnoisseurs, 1591) was the catalyst for a new Hindi classicism that attracted a spectacular following in the leading courts of early modern India. The circulation of Hindi literature among diverse communities during this period is testament to a remarkable pluralism that cannot be understood interms of the nationalist logic that has constrained modern Hindi and Urdu to be "Hindu" and "Muslim" languages since the nineteenth century. With the cultural reforms ushered in by colonialism, north Indians repudiated the classical traditions of the courtly past, a complex process given extendedtreatment in the final chapter. Busch provides valuable insight into more than two centuries of Hindi courtly culture. Poetry of Kings also showcases the importance of bringing precolonial archives into dialogue with current debates of postcolonial theory.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2011
Handbook of Twentieth-Century Literatures of India by
India has a rich literary assemblage produced by its many different regional traditions, religious faiths, ethnic subcultures and linguistic groups. The published literature of the 20th century is a particularly interesting subject and is the focus of this book, as it represents the provocative conjuncture of the transitions of Indian modernity. This reference book surveys the major regional literatures of contemporary India in the context of the country's diversity and heterogeneity. Chapters are devoted to particular regions, and the arrangement of the work invites comparisons of literary traditions. Chapters provide extensive bibliographies of primary works, thus documenting the creative achievement of numerous contemporary Indian authors. Some chapters cite secondary works as well, and the volume concludes with a list of general works providing further information. An introductory essay overviews theoretical concerns, ideological and aesthetic considerations, developments in various genres, and the history of publishing in regional literatures. The introduction provides a context for approaching the chapters that follow, each of which is devoted to the literature of a particular region. Each chapter begins with a concise introductory section. The body of each chapter is structured according to social and historical events, literary forms, or broad descriptive or analytic trends, depending on the particular subject matter. Each chapter then closes with an extensive bibliography of primary works, thus documenting the rich literary tradition of the region. Some chapters also cite secondary sources as an aid to the reader. The final chapters of the book address special topics, such as sub-cultural literatures, or the interplay between literature and film. A list of additional sources of general information concludes the volume.
Location: Mugar Stacks PK5416 .H27 1996Publication Date: 1996
South Asian Literature - Anthologies
Folktales from India : a selection of oral tales from twenty-two languages by Collection of the oral tales compiled from a vast array of sources and translated from twenty-two languages of the country.
Location: Mugar Stacks GR305 .F64 1991Publication Date: 1991
Of Sacred and Secular Desire by
The fertile land of the five rivers (Punjab in Persian) has persistently stirred the imagination of its peoples. Its story is the story of invasion. In 326 BCE, Alexander the Great marched through the Hindu Kush, conquered the verdant plains now divided between India and Pakistan, and stamped Greek cultural and linguistic influence on the region. Over the centuries, the lure of the Punjab attracted further waves of outsiders: Scythians, Sassanians, Huns, Afghans, Turks, Mughals, and - closer to our own times - the British. Many savage battles were fought. But at the same time, as different ethnic and religious groups came together and melded, the collective psyche of the Punjab was colored by vibrant new patterns, new worldviews, and new languages. Punjabi poetry is the dynamic result of these cross-cultural encounters. In her rich and diverse anthology, Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh makes a major contribution to interfaith dialogue and comparative literary studies. Covering the entire spectrum of writers, from the artistic patterns of the first Punjabi poet (Baba Farid, 1173-1265) to feminist author Amrita Pritam (d. 2005), the volume serves as an ideal introduction to the three faiths of Sikhism, Islam, and Hinduism. Whether focusing on Sikh gurus or Sufi saints, it boldly illuminates the area's unique character, linguistic rhythms and celebrations, and will have strong appeal to undergraduate students of religion, literature, and South Asian studies, as well as general readers.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2012
Mapping the Nation: an anthology of Indian poetry in English, 1870-1920 by
Focusing specifically on the poetic construction of India, 'Mapping the Nation' offers a broad selection of poetry written by Indians in English during the period 1870-1920. Centering upon the "mapping" of India - both as a regional location and as a poetic ideal - this unique anthology presents poetry from various geographical nodal points of the subcontinent, as well as that written in the imperial metropole of England, to illustrate how the variety of India's poetical imagining corresponded to the diversity of her inhabitants and geography.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2013
Anglophone Poetry in Colonial India, 1780-1913 by
Anglophone Poetry in Colonial India, 1780-1913: A Critical Anthology makes accessible for the first time the entire range of poems written in English on the subcontinent from their beginnings in 1780 to the watershed moment in 1913 when Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel Prize in Literature.Mary Ellis Gibson establishes accurate texts for such well-known poets as Toru Dutt and the early nineteenth-century poet Kasiprasad Ghosh. The anthology brings together poets who were in fact colleagues, competitors, and influences on each other. The historical scope of the anthology, beginning with the famous Orientalist Sir William Jones and the anonymous "Anna Maria" and ending with Indian poets publishing in fin-de-siecle London, will enable teachers and students to understand what brought Kipling early fame and why at the same time Tagore's "Gitanjali" became a global phenomenon. Anglophone Poetry in Colonial India, 1780-1913 puts all parties to the poetic conversation back together and makes their work accessible to American audiences.With accurate and reliable texts, detailed notes on vocabulary, historical and cultural references, and biographical introductions to more than thirty poets, this collection significantly reshapes the understanding of English language literary culture in India. It allows scholars to experience the diversity of poetic forms created in this period and to understand the complex religious, cultural, political, and gendered divides that shaped them."
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2011
Postcolonial Literature
The Postcolonial Indian Novel in English by
Indian writers of English such as G. V. Desani, Salman Rushdie, Amit Chaudhuri, Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth, Allan Sealy, Shashi Tharoor, Arundhati Roy, Vikram Chandra and Jhumpa Lahiri have taken the potentialities of the novel form to new heights. Against the background of the genre's macro-history, this study attempts to explain the stunning vitality, colourful diversity, and the outstanding but sometimes controversial success of postcolonial Indian novels in the light of ongoing debates in postcolonial studies. It analyses the warp and woof of the novelistic text through a cross-sectional scrutiny of the issues of democracy, the poetics of space, the times of empire, nation and globalization, self-writing in the auto/meta/docu-fictional modes, the musical, pictorial, cinematic and culinary intertextualities that run through this hyperpalimpsestic practice and the politics of gender, caste and language that gives it an inimitable stamp. This concise and readable survey gives us intimations of a truly world literature as imagined by Francophone writers because the postcolonial Indian novel is a concrete illustration of how language liberated from its exclusive pact with the nation can enter into a dialogue with a vast polyphonic ensemble.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2011
Writing Past Colonialism: Out of Bounds: Anglo-Indian Literature and the Geography of Displacement by
Out of Bounds focuses on the crucial role that conceptions of iconic colonial Indian spaces--jungles, cantonments, cities, hill stations, bazaars, clubs--played in the literary and social production of British India. Author Alan Johnson illuminates the geographical, rhetorical, and ideological underpinnings of such depictions and, from this, argues that these spaces operated as powerful motifs in the acculturation of Anglo-India. He shows that the bicultural, intrinsically ambivalent outlook of Anglo-Indian writers is acutely sensitive to spatial motifs that, insofar as these condition the idea of home and homelessness, alternately support and subvert conventional colonial perspectives. Colonial spatial motifs not only informed European representations of India, but also shaped important aesthetic notions of the period, such as the sublime. This book also explains how and why Europeans' rhetorical and visual depictions of the Indian subcontinent, whether ostensibly administrative, scientific, or aesthetic, constituted a primary means of memorializing Empire, creating an idiom that postcolonial India continues to use in certain ways. Consequently, Johnson examines specific motifs of Anglo-Indian cultural remembrance, such as the hunting memoir, hill station life, and the Mutiny, all of which facilitated the mythic iconography of the Raj. He bases his work on the premise that spatiality (the physical as well as social conceptualization of space) is a vital component of the mythos of colonial life and that the study of spatiality is too often a subset of a focus on temporality. Johnson reads canonical and lesser-known fiction, memoirs, and travelogues alongside colonial archival documents to identify shared spatial motifs and idioms that were common to the period. Although he discusses colonial works, he focuses primarily on the writings of Anglo-Indians such as Rudyard Kipling, John Masters, Jim Corbett, and Flora Annie Steel to demonstrate how conventions of spatial identity were rhetorically maintained--and continually compromised. All of these considerations amplify this book's focus on the porosity of boundaries in literatures of the colony and of the nation.Out of Bounds will be of interest to not only postcolonial literary scholars, but also scholars and students in interdisciplinary nineteenth-century studies, South Asian cultural history, cultural anthropology, women's studies, and sociology.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2011
Acts of Angry Writing: on citizenship and orientalism in postcolonial India by
From Aristotle to Seneca, ancient philosophers considered anger to be aggressive and incompatible with rational conduct, and later thinkers associated this "illogical" emotion with femininity and its flaws. In Acts of Angry Writing: On Citizenship and Orientalism in Postcolonial India, author Alessandra Marino looks at anger differently, as an essential condition for writing in contexts of struggle. Analyzing the activist literature and autobiographical writings of Indian writers Mahasweta Devi, Arundhati Roy, and Sampat Pal, Marino sheds light on anger as a trigger for the political writing where struggles for the basic rights of indigenous people and lower castes are fought. Acts of Angry Writing is divided into four parts. In the first two, Marino focuses on Roy and Devi to analyze the relation between the authors' works and some of the most famous actions of social protest in which they have been involved. In the third part, Marino examines the representation of anger as a productive emotion in Warrior in a Pink Sari, the autobiography of Sampat Pal, a telling example of the close relation between literature, social reality, and ongoing political debates.Marino concludes by reflecting on the link between an ethical call that initiates acts of social protest and the writing related to active citizenship movements in contemporary rural India. Acts of Angry Writing will be informative reading for scholars in a range of fields, from cultural and postcolonial studies to gender studies, South Asian studies, and citizenship studies. Its rich discussion of performativity and speech acts theory bridges the gap between the fields of literary theory, law, and citizenship.
Location: Mugar Stacks PK5410.S63 M36 2015Publication Date: 2015
Between the Lines: South Asians and Postcoloniality by
This ground-breaking collection of new interviews, critical essays, and commentary explores South Asian identity and culture. Sensitive to the false homogeneity implied by "South Asian," "diaspora," "postcolonial," and "Asian American," the contributors attempt to unpack these terms. By examining the social, economic, and historical particularities of people who live "between the lines"--on and between borders--they reinstate questions of power and privilege, agency and resistance. As South Asians living in the United States and Canada, each to some degree must reflect on the interaction of the personal "I," the collective "we," and the world beyond. The South Asian scholars gathered together in this volume speak from a variety of theoretical perspectives; in the essays and interviews that cross the boundaries of conventional academic disciplines, they engage in intense, sometimes contentious, debate. Contributors: Meena Alexander, Gauri Viswanathan, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Amritjit Singh, M. G. Vassanji, Sohail Inayatullah, Ranita Chatterjee, Benita Mehta, Sanjoy Majumder, Mahasveta Barua, Sukeshi Kamra, Samir Dayal, Pushpa Naidu Parekh, Indrani Mitra, Huma Ibrahim, Amitava Kumar, Shantanu DuttaAhmed, Uma Parameswaran. In the series Asian American History and Culture, edited by Sucheng Chan, David Palumbo-Liu, Michael Omi, K. Scott Wong, and Linda Trinh V#65533;.
Location: Mugar Stacks E184.S69 B48 1996Publication Date: 1996
South Asian Diaspora
Imagining Bombay, London, New York and Beyond: South Asian diasporic writing from 1990 to the present by
This book examines new literary imaginings of the interconnected city spaces of Bombay, London and New York in South Asian diasporic texts from the 1990s to the present. It charts the transition from London-centric studies on postcolonial city spaces to the new axis of Bombay, London and New York. The book argues that two key dynamics have developed from this shift: on the one hand, London, once the destination of choice for migrants, becomes a #65533;transit zone#65533; for onward movement to New York; on the other, different cities are perceived to coexist and come together in one single location. To investigate these new webs of interactions and power relations, this monograph employs Bakhtin's model of the chronotope. Serving as a magnifying lens, the chronotope inserts different spatial and temporal segments within wider narratives of urban space. This book promotes a new understanding of the cities of the South Asian diaspora as subversive sites for defining processes of cultural signification.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2015
South Asian Atlantic Literature, 1970-2010 by
A major interpretation of recent South Asian diasporic writing and cinema in specifically transatlantic termsRuth Maxey provides readings of canonical and less well-known South Asian American and British Asian texts and key cinematic works. She explores the formal and thematic tendencies of the works, relating them to gender politics, the marketplace, and issues of literary value and historical change.While engaging with established debates, Maxey also intervenes in new ways in transatlantic, postcolonial literary, and Asian American cultural studies.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2011
Exploring Gender in the Literature of the Indian Diaspora by
Reflecting the continuing interest in the diaspora and transnationalism, this collection of critical essays is located at the intersection of gender and diaspora studies, exploring the multiple ways in which the literature of the Indian diaspora negotiates, interprets and performs gender within established and emerging ethnic spaces. Based on current theories of diaspora, as well as feminist and queer studies, this collection focuses on close textual interpretation framed by cultural and literary theory. Targeted at both academic and general readers interested in gender and diaspora, as well as Indian literature, this collection is an eclectic selection of works by both established academics and emerging scholars from different parts of the world and with diverse backgrounds. It brings together multiple approaches to the predicament of belonging and the creation of identities, while showcasing the range and depth of the Indian diaspora and the diversity of its literary productions.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2015
Our Feet Walk the Sky: women of the South Asian diaspora by
The first anthology of its kind: includes essays, memoir, and fiction.
Location: Mugar Stacks PS153.A84 O97 1993Publication Date: 2008
Finding Articles
- BU Libraries Search (BULS) This link opens in a new window BU Libraries Search provides a single place to search for a wide variety of academic material provided by the library. The material covered by the search includes books, journals, scores, video and audio recordings, and other physical items held by the library. The search also covers ebooks and ejournals owned by the library, as well as online material provided by the library from a variety of sources.
Literature Databases
- Literature Online (LION) This link opens in a new window LION includes texts, criticism, and reference material, including thousands of literary articles, essays, biographies and encyclopedia entries on over 350,000 works of poetry, prose, and drama from the 8th to the 21st century.
- Literature Criticism Online This link opens in a new window Contains critical and biographical essays on authors currently living or who died after Jan. 1, 2000. May be searched simultaneously with Contemporary Authors and the Dictionary of Literary Biography.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new window This database provides full text access to the back issues of core scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Book reviews are included as well as journal articles. Abstracts are available for some of the articles. Date coverage: earliest issues of each journal up to the most current five years for most publications and to the present for some.
- Project Muse This link opens in a new window Project Muse provides digital access to scholarly journals and books in the humanities and social sciences. The scholarly content comes from non-profit scholarly publishers, including university presses and societies. The full text resources include journal articles, book reviews and book chapters.
- MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new window Indexes critical materials on literature, languages, linguistics, and folklore. Includes citations from worldwide publications: periodicals, books, essay collections, working papers, proceedings, dissertations and bibliographies. Date coverage: 1920s - present.
Humanities/Social Science Databases
- ATLA Religion Database This link opens in a new window An index to journal articles, essays, and book reviews in the field of religion. Covers biblical studies, world religions, church history, and religious perspectives on social issues. Date coverage: 1908 - present with some older items.
- Index Islamicus This link opens in a new window Index to literature on Islam, the Middle East and Muslim areas of Asia and Africa, and Muslim minorities elsewhere. Includes journal articless, conference proceedings, monographs, and book reviews. Date coverage: 1906 - present.
- Bibliography of Asian Studies This link opens in a new window An index to works, primarily in the humanities and the social sciences, pertaining to East, Southeast, and South Asia. Covers articles, chapters in edited volumes, conference proceedings, anthologies, Festschriften, and books. Date coverage: 1971 - present except for books (1971-1992).
- FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals Database This link opens in a new window Indexes, abstracts, and provides full text of articles from academic and popular film journals. Also includes several film reference books. Abstracts late 19th century - present; full text 1930s - present.
- Screen Studies Collection This link opens in a new window Screen Studies Collection brings the Film Periodicals Database, Film Index International, and the AFI Catalog together in one site.
e-Text Collections
- GRETIL - Göttingen Register of Electronic Texts in Indian Languages GRETIL is intended as a cumulative register of the numerous download sites for electronic texts in Indian languages. GRETIL registers only e-texts that are freely available for scholarly purposes and can be employed for word search etc. in a standard word processing programme. In general, this excludes PDF files displaying text in Devanagari or other Indian scripts, special formats for proprietary software, as well as e-texts distributed for commercial profit.
- SARIT: Search and Retrieval of Indic Texts Access to electronic editions of texts in Sanskrit and other Indian languages. These are documented, dated and have embedded notes about their change history, so that they can be publicly cited and used with confidence as scholarly sources. All the texts at SARIT are licensed under a Creative Commons license. You can download all the texts in the following formats: XML, EPUB and PDF; and you can also open the XML-file online.
- Gita Supersite A digital repository of Indian philosophical texts. This website has the aphorisms of the Brahma Sutra together with Sankara's commentary. The texts are in Sanskrit and can be viewed in any of 11 language scripts: Assamese, Bengali, Devanagari, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Punjabi, Roman, Tamil and Telugu.
- Sanskrit Documents Collection Compilation of Sanskrit Documents displayed in Devanagari and other Indian scripts, and in transliteration format. The available Sanskrit e-texts range from shlokas and stotras to major works such as Ramayana and Mahabharata.
- Internet Indian History Sourcebook The Internet History Sourcebooks Project is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts presented cleanly (without advertising or excessive layout) for educational use.
Literary Biography
- Contemporary Authors This link opens in a new window A bio-bibliographical guide to current writers in fiction, general nonfiction, poetry, journalism, drama, motion pictures, television, and other fields.
- Biography (Gale in Context) This link opens in a new window Biography In Context offers biographical information about historically significant figures as well as present-day newsmakers. It includes reference content alongside magazine and journal articles, primary sources, videos, audio podcasts, and images.
- Literature Online (LION) This link opens in a new window LION includes texts, criticism, and reference material, including thousands of literary articles, essays, biographies and encyclopedia entries on over 350,000 works of poetry, prose, and drama from the 8th to the 21st century.
Browse books and ebooks on:
Pity of Partition: Manto's life, times, and work across the India-Pakistan divide by
Saadat Hasan Manto (1912-1955) was an established Urdu short story writer and a rising screenwriter in Bombay at the time of India's partition in 1947, and he is perhaps best known for the short stories he wrote following his migration to Lahore in newly formed Pakistan. Today Manto is an acknowledged master of twentieth-century Urdu literature, and his fiction serves as a lens through which the tragedy of partition is brought sharply into focus. In The Pity of Partition, Manto's life and work serve as a prism to capture the human dimension of sectarian conflict in the final decades and immediate aftermath of the British raj. Ayesha Jalal draws on Manto's stories, sketches, and essays, as well as a trove of his private letters, to present an intimate history of partition and its devastating toll. Probing the creative tension between literature and history, she charts a new way of reconnecting the histories of individuals, families, and communities in the throes of cataclysmic change. Jalal brings to life the people, locales, and events that inspired Manto's fiction, which is characterized by an eye for detail, a measure of wit and irreverence, and elements of suspense and surprise. In turn, she mines these writings for fresh insights into everyday cosmopolitanism in Bombay and Lahore, the experience and causes of partition, the postcolonial transition, and the advent of the Cold War in South Asia. The first in-depth look in English at this influential literary figure, The Pity of Partition demonstrates the revelatory power of art in times of great historical rupture.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2013
Imaginary Homelands: essays and criticism 1981-1991 by
"Read every page of this book; better still, re-read them. The invocation means no hardship, since every true reader must surely be captivated by Rushdie's masterful invention and ease, the flow of wit and insight and passion. How literature of the highest order can serve the interests of our common humanity is freshly illustrated here: a defence of his past, a promise for the future, and a surrender to nobody or nothing whatever except his own all-powerful imagination."-Michael Foot, Observer Salman Rushdie's Imaginary Homelands is an important record of one writer's intellectual and personal odyssey. The seventy essays collected here, written over the last ten years, cover an astonishing range of subjects -the literature of the received masters and of Rushdie's contemporaries; the politics of colonialism and the ironies of culture; film, politicians, the Labour Party, religious fundamentalism in America, racial prejudice; and the preciousness of the imagination and of free expression. For this paperback edition, the author has written a new essay to mark the third anniversary of the fatwa.
Location: Mugar Stacks PR6068.U757 I4 1992Publication Date: 1992
Elusive Lives: Gender, Autobiography, and the Self in Muslim South Asia by
Muslim South Asia is widely characterized as a culture that idealizes female anonymity: women's bodies are veiled and their voices silenced. Challenging these perceptions, Siobhan Lambert-Hurley highlights an elusive strand of autobiographical writing dating back several centuries that offers a new lens through which to study notions of selfhood. In Elusive Lives, she locates the voices of Muslim women who rejected taboos against women speaking out, by telling their life stories in written autobiography. To chart patterns across time and space, materials dated from the sixteenth century to the present are drawn from across South Asia - including present-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Lambert-Hurley uses many rare autobiographical texts in a wide array of languages, including Urdu, English, Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi and Malayalam to elaborate a theoretical model for gender, autobiography, and the self beyond the usual Euro-American frame. In doing so, she works toward a new, globalized history of the field. Ultimately, Elusive Lives points to the sheer diversity of Muslim women's lives and life stories, offering a unique window into a history of the everyday against a backdrop of imperialism, reformism, nationalism and feminism.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2018
South Asian Writers in Twentieth-Century Britain by
South Asian Writers in Twentieth-Century Britain is the first book to provide a historical account of the publication and reception of South Asian anglophone writing from the 1930s to the present, based on original archival research drawn from a range of publishing houses. This comparison ofsucceeding generations of writers who emigrated to, or were born in, Britain examines how the experience of migrancy, the attitudes towards migrant writers in the literary market place, and the critical reception of them, changed significantly throughout the twentieth century. Ranasinha shows howthe aesthetic, cultural, and political context changed significantly for each generation, producing radically different kinds of writing and transforming the role of the postcolonial writer of South Asian origin.The extensive use of original materials from publishers' archives shows how shifting political, academic, and commercial agendas in Britain and North America influenced the selection, content, presentation, and consumption of many of these texts. The differences between writers of differentgenerations can thus in part be understood in terms of the different demands of their publishers and expectations of readers in each decade. Writers from different generations are paired accordingly in each chapter: Nirad Chaudhuri (1897-1999) with Tambimuttu (1915-83); Ambalavener Sivanandan (born1923) with Kamala Markandaya (born 1924); Salman Rushdie (born 1947) with Farrukh Dhondy (born 1944); and Hanif Kureishi (born 1954) with Meera Syal (born 1963). Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand, Attia Hosain, V.S Naipaul, and Aubrey Menen are also discussed.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2007
Writing Resistance: The Rhetorical Imagination of Hindi Dalit Literature by
Writing Resistance is the first close study of the growing body of contemporary Hindi-language Dalit (low caste) literature in India. The Dalit literary movement has had an immense sociopolitical and literary impact on various Indian linguistic regions, yet few scholars have attempted to situate the form within contemporary critical frameworks. Laura R. Brueck's approach goes beyond recognizing and celebrating the subaltern speaking, emphasizing the sociopolitical perspectives and literary strategies of a range of contemporary Dalit writers working in Hindi. Brueck explores several essential questions: what makes Dalit literature Dalit? What makes it good? Why is this genre important, and where does it oppose or intersect with other bodies of Indian literature? She follows the debate among Dalit writers as they establish a specifically Dalit literary critical approach, underscoring the significance of the Dalit literary sphere as a "counterpublic" generating contemporary Dalit social and political identities. Brueck then performs close readings of contemporary Hindi Dalit literary prose narratives, focusing on the aesthetic and stylistic strategies deployed by writers whose class, gender, and geographic backgrounds shape their distinct voices. By reading Dalit literature as literature, this study unravels the complexities of its sociopolitical and identity-based origins.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2014
Bibliographies
- Bibliography of Asian Studies This link opens in a new window An index to works, primarily in the humanities and the social sciences, pertaining to East, Southeast, and South Asia. Covers articles, chapters in edited volumes, conference proceedings, anthologies, Festschriften, and books. Date coverage: 1971 - present except for books (1971-1992).
- MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new window Indexes critical materials on literature, languages, linguistics, and folklore. Includes citations from worldwide publications: periodicals, books, essay collections, working papers, proceedings, dissertations and bibliographies. Date coverage: 1920s - present.
- National Bibliography of Indian Literature (NBIL) The National Bibliography of Indian Literature (NBIL) is a compilation of works "of literary merit, and important and significant books on Philosophy, Religion, History and the other aspects of the Humanities" The Bibliography covers the period from 1901-1953.
