East of Delhi : Multilingual Literary Culture and World Literature

Like many societies across the world, the region of Awadh in North India has been bilingual throughout its history. But literary histories of the region often indicate otherwise. In the early twentieth century, colonists recodified literary histories separately according to language, detached written literature from oral literature, and reimagined the entangled literary past according to their own ideas about language, literature, and Indian history. At the same time, multilingualism remained resilient and acquired new uses. East of Delhi: Multilingual Literary Culture and World Literature examines literature produced, practiced, and circulated in and out of North India, focusing on the region of Awadh, from the beginning of recorded vernacular literature in the late fourteenth century to the colonial era of the early twentieth century. This book considers texts in a wide range of genres-courtly, devotional, and popular-composed in the main languages of the region: Hindavi, Persian, Brajbhasha, Urdu. Individual chapters focus on narratives, devotional song-poems and didactic works, local courtly literary practices, and multilingual education as recorded in biographical dictionaries-anthologies. Author Francesca Orsini suggests that this multilingual and multi-genre approach is better suited to capturing the texture, complexity, and dynamics of literature in the world, and of literary history, than approaches that focus only on global circulation or models that draw centers and peripheries on a single global map. Cover Series East of Delhi Copyright Dedication Contents List of Figures and Tables Acknowledgments Note on Transliteration Map of Purab qasbas and cities 1. Introduction: A Multilingual Local in World Literature No Paris Consecration Located and Multilingual Why Purab? The Linguistic Economy in the Region But Is This World Literature? This Book 2. Following Stories across Scripts, Languages, and Repertoires The Emergence of a Genre Sumptuous Romances Hindavi Kathas in the Mughal World Hindavi Kathas into Persian Kathas in the World of Print and in Literary History 3. Making Space for Sant Texts: Orature, Literary History, and World Literature Making Space for Sant Orature Poetry and the Idiom of Caste The Aesthetics of Sant Orature Religious Dialogism in Sant Orature Both Mobile and Located Sant Orature into Print: Booklets and World Literature 4. Local Cosmopolitans: Poetry and Distinction in the Qasbas and Small Courts of Awadh Reconstructing a Multilingual Archive Studying and Strolling Practices of Distinction Strategies of Local Inscription Parallel Cultivation Urdu and Amnesia 5. Colonial Impact and Indian Response Awadh as a Colonial Center Colonial Effects and the Vernacular Problem Separate Canons Colonial Folklore and the Invention of Folk Literature Forget the Novel Beyond (and through) English Shifting the Lens Conclusions: Thinking through Space Notes Bibliography Index "This chapter sets out the located and multilingual approach to literary history employed in the book. It outlines the geographical and historical scope of the book and traces the changing political boundaries of Purab (East), the region east of Delhi in the Gangetic plain of northern India later better known as Awadh, from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. The presence of many small towns (qasbas), which were administrative, economic, and cultural nodes, but no capital city until the eighteenth century marks the decentered character of the region. The chapter also makes a case that the multilingual approach 'from the ground up employed in this book can help produce a richer and more textured take on world literature"-- Provided by publisher