Author: Sisir Das
Publisher: Sahitya Akademi
Year: 2000
Language: English
Pages: 815
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8172010060
Description
Radically different from all existing models of literary history, this work is an account of the literary activities of the Indian people carried through in many languages and under different social conditions.
It explores the dynamics of literary production in India and identifies the features of commonality among various literary traditions in the country without ignoring their diversities. It is a story of a multilingual literature, a plurality of linguistic expressions and cultural experience and also of the remarkable unity underlying them.
This volume deals with a fascinating period conspicuous y the growing complexities of multilingualism, changes in the modes of literary transmission and in the readership and also by the dominance of the English language as an instrument of power in Indian society.
The first part of this volume is a well-documented narrative highlighting the tortuous process of the Indian response to an alien literary tradition, its resistance and acceptance an the continuous tension between the foreign and the indigenous models. The second part, a chronology of literary events, presents a minute break-up of the continuum of literary activities during this period.
This work also provokes serious debate s on he nature of the concept of influence in a colonial situation, applicability of Western literary canons on Indian literature and finally on the sufficiency of the language-literature equation in identifying the boundaries of literature.