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A grand synthesis of unprecedented scope, Literary Cultures in History is the first comprehensive history of the rich literary traditions of South Asia. Together these traditions are unmatched in their combination of antiquity, continuity, and multicultural complexity, and are a unique resource for understanding the development of language and imagination over time. In this unparalleled volume, an international team of renowned scholars considers fifteen South Asian literary traditions—including Hindi, Indian-English, Persian, Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Urdu—in their full historical and cultural variety.The volume is united by a twofold theoretical aim: to understand South Asia by looking at it through the lens of its literary cultures and to rethink the practice of literary history by incorporating non-Western categories and processes. The questions these seventeen essays ask are accordingly broad, ranging from the character of cosmopolitan and vernacular traditions to the impact of colonialism and independence, indigenous literary and aesthetic theory, and modes of performance. A sophisticated assimilation of perspectives from experts in anthropology, political science, history, literary studies, and religion, the book makes a landmark contribution to historical cultural studies and to literary theory in addition to the new perspectives it offers on what literature has meant in South Asia.(Available in South Asia from Oxford University Press--India) Part 1.Globalizing literary cultures --Sanskrit literary culture from the inside out /Sheldon Pollock --The culture and politics of Persian in precolonial Hindustan /Muzaffar Alam --The historical formation of Indian-English literature /Vinay Dharwadker --Part 2.Literature in southern locales --Three moments in the genealogy of Tamil literary culture /Norman Cutler --Critical tensions in the history of Kannada literary culture /D.R. Nagaraj --Multiple literary cultures in Telugu : court, temple, and public /Velcheru Narayana Rao --Genre and society : the literary culture of premodern Kerala /Rich Freeman --Part 3.The centrality of borderlands --The two histories of literary culture in Bengal /Sudipta Kaviraj --From Hermacandra to Hind Svarāj : region and power in Gujarati literary culture /Sitamshu Yashaschandra --At the crossroads of Indic and Iranian civilizations : Sindhi literary culture /Ali S. Asani --Part 4.Buddhist cultures and South Asian literatures --What is literature in Pali? /Steven Collins --Works and persons in Sinhala literary culture /Charles Hallisey ---- The Indian literary identity in Tibet /Matthew T. Kapstein --Part 5.The twinned histories of Urdu and Hindi --A long history of Urdu literary culture, part 1 : naming and placing a literary culture /Shamsur Rahman Faruqi --A long history of Urdu literary culture, part 2 : histories, performances, and masters /Frances W. Pritchett --The progress of Hindi, part 1 : the development of a transregional idiom /Stuart McGregor --The progress of Hindi, part 2 : Hindi and the nation /Harish Trivedi.
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