Under the Bhasha Gaze (Hardcover)

Prof PP Raveendran

ISBN 10: 0192871552 / ISBN 13: 9780192871558

Published by Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2023

About this Item

Hardcover. The book is a study of literature in India in the context of recent discussions on modernity and its theoretical extensions such as the everyday and the social imaginary. It is a critique of the aesthetics and politics of modernity as they are embodied in Indian bhasha literature of the past two centuries. The primary objective of the book is to explore the trajectory of modernity after Indian literature encountered colonialism in the early 19th century. Theintricate ways in which the bhasha imagination negotiated questions around concepts such as colonialism, aesthetics, the literary, the historical, and the social, have received focused attention in theanalysis. Although the study acknowledges the European provenance of modernity as a historical idea, it also recognizes the inherent complexity of the concept and its equivocal connotations when used with reference to the polyphonic bhasha communities in India. Theoretical issues debated in relation to modernity such as its conceptual affinities with the western enlightenment project, its ideological investment in European aesthetics, and its implication for the evolution of what might becalled the hermetic aesthetic are significant to this study. The work also examines the regional strengths of the social imaginary that render a conventionally conceived modernity inadequate in explainingthe uniquely modern strengths of the Indian bhasha imagination. This book on Indian literature offers a critique of the aesthetics and politics of modernity as embodied in Indian bhasha literature of the past two centuries. It discusses the complex ways in which the bhasha imagination, even as it reshaped the history of colonial modernity, simultaneously allowed itself to be shaped by it in turn. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9780192871558

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Under the Bhasha Gaze (Hardcover)
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, Oxford
• Publication Date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0192871552
• ISBN 13: 9780192871558
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

The book is a study of literature in India in the context of recent discussions on modernity and its theoretical extensions such as the everyday and the social imaginary. It is a critique of the aesthetics and politics of modernity as they are embodied in Indian bhasha literature of the past two centuries. The primary objective of the book is to explore the trajectory of modernity after Indian literature encountered colonialism in the early 19th century. The intricate ways in which the bhasha imagination negotiated questions around concepts such as colonialism, aesthetics, the literary, the historical, and the social, have received focused attention in the analysis. Although the study acknowledges the European provenance of modernity as a historical idea, it also recognizes the inherent complexity of the concept and its equivocal connotations when used with reference to the polyphonic bhasha communities in India. Theoretical issues debated in relation to modernity such as its conceptual affinities with the western enlightenment project, its ideological investment in European aesthetics, and its implication for the evolution of what might be called the hermetic aesthetic are significant to this study. The work also examines the regional strengths of the social imaginary that render a conventionally conceived modernity inadequate in explaining the uniquely modern strengths of the Indian bhasha imagination.

About the Author

PP Raveendran, Vaikom Muhammed Basheer Chair Visiting Professor, University of Calicut, India.

PP Raveendran, bilingual critic and currently the Vaikom Muhammed Basheer Chair Visiting Professor at the University of Calicut, was formerly Professor and Director, School of Letters, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam. He is the author of, among others, 'Texts Histories Geographies: Reading Indian Literature' (Orient BlackSwan, 2009), 'Kamala Das' (Sahitya Akademi, 2017), and the coedited volume, 'The Oxford India Anthology of Modern Malayalam Literature' (Oxford University Press, 2017). His work in Malayalam titled 'Adhunikatayude Pinnampuram' (The Backyard of Modernity, 2017) won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for Literary Criticism for the year 2018.