English heart, Hindi heartland : the political life of literature in India / Rashmi Sadana.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sadana, Rashmi, 1969-

Series:

FlashPoints

FlashPoints ; 8

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Indic literature (English)--20th century--History and criticism.

Indic literature (English).

Publishers and publishing--India--History--20th century.

Publishers and publishing.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (241 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, c2012.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

English Heart, Hindi Heartland examines Delhi's postcolonial literary world-its institutions, prizes, publishers, writers, and translators, and the cultural geographies of key neighborhoods-in light of colonial histories and the globalization of English. Rashmi Sadana places internationally recognized authors such as Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai, Vikram Seth, and Aravind Adiga in the context of debates within India about the politics of language and alongside other writers, including K. Satchidanandan, Shashi Deshpande, and Geetanjali Shree. Sadana undertakes an ethnographic study of literary culture that probes the connections between place, language, and text in order to show what language comes to stand for in people's lives. In so doing, she unmasks a social discourse rife with questions of authenticity and cultural politics of inclusion and exclusion. English Heart, Hindi Heartland illustrates how the notion of what is considered to be culturally and linguistically authentic not only obscures larger questions relating to caste, religious, and gender identities, but that the authenticity discourse itself is continually in flux. In order to mediate and extract cultural capital from India's complex linguistic hierarchies, literary practitioners strategically deploy a fluid set of cultural and political distinctions that Sadana calls "literary nationality." Sadana argues that English, and the way it is positioned among the other Indian languages, does not represent a fixed pole, but rather serves to change political and literary alliances among classes and castes, often in surprising ways.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Prologue: The Slush Pile

1. Reading Delhi and Beyond

2. Two Tales of a City

3. In Sujan Singh Park

4. The Two Brothers of Ansari Road

5. At the Sahitya Akademi

6. Across the Yamuna

7. "A Suitable Text for a Vegetarian Audience"

8. Indian Literature Abroad

9. Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786613521019

9781280116728

1280116722

9780520952294

0520952294

OCLC:

776108966