The Idea of Indian Literature: Gender, Genre, and Comparative Method (Flashpoints, 41)

Product description Review Winner of the MLA Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for South Asian Studies - Honorable Mention for the ACLA René Wellek Prize - Shortlisted for the MSA First Book Prize "Fields like World Literature and Comparative Literature can find in the study of Indian literature, and Mani's book in particular, a model, a template, even a methodology, to guide the field beyond its Anglocentrism. The book succeeds because these large and ambitious goals are not just polemically declared. Instead, these ideas emerge from within and are inferred from primary sources." --Modernism/modernity"Mani is a rare scholar who can do, and more importantly does do, truly comparative work between two disparate vernacular languages of India. The insight she brings to the points of both convergence and divergence in the modern histories of Hindi and Tamil prose fiction and its regional and national theorizations is invaluable." --Modern Fiction Studies​"The Idea of Indian Literature is a multi-faceted text that explores how a single canon can be written in multiple languages which may be paradoxical and contested when translated . . . Although the book begins with a utopian ambition to undergird both Indian and comparative literature, in her text, Mani manages to show how literature creates an understanding of different languages." --South Asian Review"Mani's multiscalar comparative approach helps us identify the paradox of Indian literature. This multifaceted investigation helps untangle the humanistic, universalist idea of Indian literature that the writers aspired to and sought to create while entering into complex negotiations with caste, class, gender and linguistic identities. The present book is of interest to not only scholars of South Asian literature, particularly Hindi and Tamil, but also to scholars of comparative methodologies." --South Asia Research"Mani shows readers how to consider literature beyond strictly national frameworks while engaging with theoretical perspectives without losing touch with history. It will be of interest to any reader interested in how national literature works in a multilingual nation." --Journal of Postcolonial Writing"Indian literature is necessarily an abstract ideal. But it is also a common project that writers working in often mutually unintelligible languages share. Hindi and Tamil may stand at opposite ends of the subcontinent and animate very different literary and sociopolitical communities. Yet Hindi and Tamil writers, this wonderfully researched and theoretically astute book shows, share ideas of genre and gender, theories and practices of translation, even rhetorical and stylistic choices. Indian literature is comparative literature, and Preetha Mani's brilliant book shows us just how. A must read for anyone interested in how national literature works in a multilingual nation." --Francesca Orsini, author of The Hindi Public Sphere 1920-1940: Language and Literature in the Age of Nationalism About the Author PREETHA MANI is an assistant professor of South Asian literatures in the Department of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures at Rutgers University.