The Hindi Canon

The Hindi Canon
Author: Mrityunjay Tripathi
Publisher: Tulika Books
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2018-10-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9788193401590

This book was first published in Hindi under the title Hindi Alochana mein Canon-Nirman ki Prakriya in 2015. It was acclaimed as one of the first critical studies of the processes of canonization (pratimanikaran) in Hindi. Indeed, the word 'canon' was used by the author to ask a new set of questions about the development of languages of criticism in Hindi, moving beyond the available vocabulary of man (worth), mulya (value), pratiman (epitome), and manak (evaluation). In the process, the theological roots of canon formation were shown to be foundational in the making of the Hindi critical lexicon and canon. This book presents a systematic but critical account of the beginnings, development and history of the process of canonization in Hindi via such exemplary figures as George Grierson, Garcin de Tassy, Ramchandra Shukla, Hazari Prasad Dwivedi, Ram Vilas Sharma, Muktibodh, Namwar Singh, Nirmal Verma, and Vijaydev Narayan Sahi. It proposes an intellectual history of Hindi criticism in the twentieth century, which today faces the challenges of a decanonization move in the form of feminist and Dalit thought.

Remapping the Indian Postcolonial Canon

Remapping the Indian Postcolonial Canon
Author: Nirmala Menon
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2016-12-27
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1137537981

This book critically examines the postcolonial canon, questioning both the disproportionate attention to texts written in English and their overuse in attempts to understand the postcolonial condition. The author addresses the non-representation of Indian literature in theory, and the inadequacy of generalizing postcolonial experiences and subjectivities based on literature produced in one language (English). It argues that, while postcolonial scholarship has successfully challenged Eurocentrism, it is now time to extend the dimensions beyond Anglophone and Francophone literatures to include literatures in other languages such as Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Tagalog, and Swahili.

Fighting Cane and Canon

Fighting Cane and Canon
Author: Rashi Rohatgi
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 175
Release: 2014-08-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1443866172

Fighting Cane and Canon: Abhimanyu Unnuth and the Case of World Literature in Mauritius joins the growing field of modern Indian Ocean studies. The book interrogates the development and persistence of Hindi poetry in Mauritius with a focus on the early poetry of Abhimanyu Unnuth. His second work, The Teeth of the Cactus, brings together questions about the value of history, of relationships forged by labour, and of spirituality in a trenchant examination of a postcolonial people choosing to pursue prosperity in an age of globalization. It captures a distinct point of view – Unnuth’s connection to the Hindi language is an unusual reaction to the creolization of the island – but also a common experience: both of Indian immigrants and of the reevaluation of their experience by Mauritians reaching adulthood, as Unnuth did, with the Independence of the Mauritian nation in 1968. The book argues that for literary scholars, reading Abhimanyu Unnuth’s poetry raises important questions about the methodological assumptions made when approaching so-called marginal postcolonial works – assumptions about translation, language, and canonicity – through the emerging methodologies of World Literature.

Hindi Dalit Literature and the Politics of Representation

Hindi Dalit Literature and the Politics of Representation
Author: Sarah Beth Hunt
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2014-08-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1317559525

This study explores how Dalits in north India have used literature as a means of protest against caste oppression. Including fresh ethnographic research and interviews, it traces the trajectory of modern Dalit writing in Hindi and its pivotal role in the creation, rise and reinforcement of a distinctive Dalit identity. The book challenges the existing impression of Hindi Dalit literature as stemming from the Dalit political assertion of the 1980s and as being chiefly imitative of the Marathi Dalit literature model. Arguing that Hindi Dalit literature has a much longer history in north India, it examines two differing strands that have taken root in Dalit expression — the early ‘popular’ production of smaller literary pamphlets and journals at the beginning of the 20th century and more contemporary modes such as autobiographies, short stories and literary criticism. The author highlights the ways in which such various forms of literary works have supported the proliferation of an all-encompassing identity for the so-called ‘untouchable’ castes. She also underscores how these have contributed to their evolving political consciousness and consolidation of newer heterogeneous identities, making a departure from their long-perceived image. The work will be important for those in Dalit studies, subaltern history, Hindi literature, postcolonial studies, political science and sociology as well as the informed general reader.

The Question of Canon

The Question of Canon
Author: Michael J Kruger
Publisher: Inter-Varsity Press
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2020-05-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1789740177

For many years now, the topic of the New Testament canon has been the main focus of my research and writing. It is an exciting field of study that probes into questions that have long fascinated both scholars and laymen alike, namely when and how these 27 books came to be regarded as a new scriptural deposit. But, the story of the New Testament canon is bigger than just the "when" and the "how". It is also, and perhaps most fundamentally, about the "why". Why did Christians have a canon at all? Does the canon exist because of some later decision or action of the second- or third-century church? Or did it arise more naturally from within the early Christian faith itself? Was the canon an extrinsic phenomenon, or an intrinsic one? These are the questions this book is designed to address. And these are not micro questions, but macro ones. They address foundational and paradigmatic issues about the way we view the canon. They force us to consider the larger framework through which we conduct our research - whether we realized we had such a framework or not. Of course, we are not the first to ask such questions about why we have a canon. Indeed, for many scholars this question has already been settled. The dominant view today, as we shall see below, is that the New Testament is an extrinsic phenomenon; a later ecclesiastical development imposed on books originally written for another purpose. This is the framework through which much of modern scholarship operates. And it is the goal of this volume to ask whether it is a compelling one. To be sure, it is no easy task challenging the status quo in any academic field. But, we should not be afraid to ask tough questions. Likewise, the consensus position should not be afraid for them to be asked.

Hindi Publishing in Colonial Lucknow

Hindi Publishing in Colonial Lucknow
Author: Shobna Nijhawan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2018-09-10
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0199095825

Investigating the emergence of Hindi publishing in colonial Lucknow, long a stronghold of Urdu and Persian literary culture, Shobna Nijhawan offers a detailed study of literary activities emerging out of the publishing house Gaṅgā Pustak Mālā in the first half of the twentieth century. Closely associated with it was the Hindi monthly Sudhā, a literary, socio-political, and illustrated periodical, in which Hindi writings were promoted and developed for the education and entertainment of the reader. In charting the literary networks established by Dularelal Bhargava, the proprietor of Gaṅgā Pustak Mālā and chief Edited by of Sudhā, this volume sheds light on his role in the development of Hindi language and literature, creation of canonical literature, and commercialization and nationalization of books and periodicals in the north Indian Hindi public sphere. Using vernacular primary sources and drawing on scholarship on periodicals and publishing houses as well as Edited by-publishers that has emerged over the past two decades, Nijhawan shows how one publishing house singlehandedly impacted the role of Hindi in the public sphere.

The Western Canon

The Western Canon
Author: Harold Bloom
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 751
Release: 2014-06-17
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0547546483

The literary critic defends the importance of Western literature from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Kafka and Beckett in this acclaimed national bestseller. NOMINATED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD Harold Bloom's The Western Canon is more than a required reading list—it is a “heroically brave, formidably learned” defense of the great works of literature that comprise the traditional Western Canon. Infused with a love of learning, compelling in its arguments for a unifying written culture, it argues brilliantly against the politicization of literature and presents a guide to the essential writers of the western literary tradition (The New York Times Book Review). Placing William Shakespeare at the “center of the canon,” Bloom examines the literary contributions of Dante Alighieri, John Milton, Jane Austen, Emily Dickenson, Leo Tolstoy, Sigmund Freud, James Joyce, Pablo Neruda, and many others. Bloom's book, much-discussed and praised in publications as diverse as The Economist and Entertainment Weekly, offers a dazzling display of erudition and passion. “An impressive work…deeply, rightly passionate about the great books of the past.”—Michel Dirda, The Washington Post Book World

Love's Subtle Magic

Love's Subtle Magic
Author: Aditya Behl
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2016-07-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0190628820

The encounter between Muslim and Hindu remains one of the defining issues of South Asian society today. It began as early as the 8th century, and the first Muslim kingdom in India, the Sultanate of Delhi, was established at the end of the 12th century. This power eventually reduced to vassalage almost every independent kingdom on the subcontinent. In Love's Subtle Magic, a remarkable and highly original book, Aditya Behl uses a little-understood genre of Sufi literature to paint an entirely new picture of the evolution of Indian culture during the earliest period of Muslim domination. These curious romantic tales transmit a profound religious message through the medium of adventurous stories of love. Although composed in the Muslim courts, they are written in a vernacular Indian language and involve Hindu yogis, Hindu princes and princesses, and Hindu gods. Until now, they have defied analysis. Behl shows that the Sufi authors of these charming tales sought to convey an Islamic vision via an Indian idiom. They thus constitute the earliest attempt at the indigenization of Islamic literature in an Indian setting. More important, however, Behl's analysis brilliantly illuminates the cosmopolitan and composite culture of the Sultanate India in which they were composed. This in turn compels us completely to rethink the standard of the opposition between Indian Hindu and foreign Muslim and recognize that the Indo-Islamic culture of this era was already significantly Indian in many important ways.

Kāma's Flowers

Kāma's Flowers
Author: Valerie Ritter
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 371
Release: 2011-09-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1438435673

Kama's Flowers documents the transformation of Hindi poetry during the crucial period of 1885-1925. As Hindi was becoming a national language and Indian nationalism was emerging, Hindi authors articulated a North Indian version of modernity by reenvisioning nature. While their writing has previously been seen as an imitation of European Romanticism, Valerie Ritter shows its unique and particular function in North India. Description of the natural world recalled traditional poetics, particularly erotic and devotional poetics, but was now used to address sociopolitical concerns, as authors created literature to advocate for a "national character" and to address a growing audience of female readers. Examining Hindi classics, translations from English poetry, literary criticism, and little-known popular works, Ritter combines translations with fresh literary analysis to show the pivotal role of nature in how modernity was understood. Bringing a new body of literature to English-language readers, Kama's Flowers also reveals the origins of an influential visual culture that resonates today in Bollywood cinema.

Print Areas

Print Areas
Author: Swapan Chakravorty
Publisher: Orient Blackswan
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2004
Genre: Book industries and trade
ISBN: 9788178240824

This Pioneering Attempt To Bring Together The Work Of Leading Contemporary Academics In Relation To The Book In India Is A Much Welcome Effort.