Product details
- ISBN 9781438431994
- Weight: 680g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 13 Sep 2010
- Publisher: State University of New York Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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Details the transformation of Tamil literary culture that came with colonialism and the encounter with Western modernity.
A true tour de force, this book documents the transformation of one Indian literature, Tamil, under the impact of colonialism and Western modernity. While Tamil is a living language, it is also India's second oldest classical language next to Sanskrit, and has a literary history that goes back over two thousand years. On the basis of extensive archival research, Sascha Ebeling tackles a host of issues pertinent to Tamil elite literary production and consumption during the nineteenth century. These include the functioning and decline of traditional systems in which poet-scholars were patronized by religious institutions, landowners, and local kings; the anatomy of changes in textual practices, genres, styles, poetics, themes, tastes, and audiences; and the role of literature in the politics of social reform, gender, and incipient nationalism. The work concludes with a discussion of the most striking literary development of the time-the emergence of the Tamil novel.
Sascha Ebeling is Assistant Professor of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago.
