Women and Literature in India: A Critical Perspective

The present volume, containing eight essays, seeks to understand the trajectory of growth of women's writing in India. It seeks to explore, historically, the narratives in women's writing, beginning with the Sangam poets and the medieval saints, to the effects of colonialism, as well as the representation of neocolonial concerns in contemporary Indian women's writing.Taken together, the chapters provide a way to analyse how literature has always been used as a form of resistance and a tool for emancipation. The contributors, with diverse perspectives, embrace a plurality of approaches in their attempt to represent the condition/s of women in India. To do so, they often delve into the intersectionality of caste, class, gender, and religious issues to paint a picture of the multiple textured realities of Indian society.By doing so, this volume tends to move beyond the orientalist frame of reading gender issues toward an acknowledgement of the multiplicity of realities that continue to plague women, which otherwise is lost through normative readings. See more