Colonialism, Modernity, and Literature: A View from India (Future of Minority Studies)

The product of years of cross-border and cross-disciplinary collaboration, this is an innovative volume of essays situated at the intersection of multi-disciplinary fields: postcolonial/subaltern theory; comparative literary analysis, especially with a South Asian and transnational focus; the study of 'alternative' and 'indigenous' modernities Front Matter....Pages i-viii Introduction: Viewing Colonialism and Modernity through Indian Literature....Pages 1-21 Front Matter....Pages 23-23 Critical Realisms in the Global South: Narrative Transculturation in Senapati’s Six Acres and a Third and García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude ....Pages 25-54 Views from Above and Below: George Eliot and Fakir Mohan Senapati....Pages 55-89 Two Classic Tales of Village India: The Realist Epistemology of Chha Mana Atha Guntha and Godaan ....Pages 91-112 The Emergence of the Modern Subject in Oriya and Assamese Literatures: Fakir Mohan Senapati and Hemchandra Barua....Pages 113-133 The Indigenous Modernity of Gurajada Apparao and Fakir Mohan Senapati....Pages 135-152 “Why Don’t You Speak?”: The Narrative Politics of Silence in Senapati, Premchand, and Monica Ali....Pages 153-170 Front Matter....Pages 171-171 The Representation of Women and Gender Relations in Six Acres and a Third....Pages 173-185 Rediscovering Ramachandra Mangaraj and Historicizing Senapati’s Critique of Colonialism....Pages 187-206 The Tradition-Modernity Dialectic in Six Acres and a Third ....Pages 207-228 Back Matter....Pages 229-261 "Mohanty has assembled an innovative volume of essays situated at the intersection of at least three multi-disciplinary fields: postcolonial and subaltern theory; comparative literary analysis, especially with a South Asian and transnational focus; and the study of "alternative" and "indigenous" modernities. Contributors emphasize the strategies of resistance that are encoded in third world literary texts; comparative literary analysis, across cultures and regions - both within the "Global South" and beyond; the forms of indigenous modernity that preceded the colonial encounter, and thus provide alternatives to the modernity that was imposed through the colonial encounter with Europe; feminist perspectives in traditional and contemporary literature; and "realist" theoretical analyses of the epistemic implications of literary forms. This definitive new work grounds the political insights of postcolonial and subaltern theory in close textual analysis, and rather than make general pronouncements about "alternative modernities," it looks at their specifically textual (literary and cultural) manifestations"-- Provided by publisher

Mohanty has assembled an innovative volume of essays situated at the intersection of at least three multi-disciplinary fields: postcolonial and subaltern theory; comparative literary analysis, especially with a South Asian and transnational focus; and the study of “alternative” and “indigenous” modernities. This definitive new work grounds the political insights of postcolonial and subaltern theory in close textual analysis and challenges readers to think in new ways about global modernity and local cultures.