Read e-book online Colonizing the Realm of Words: The Transformation of Tamil PDF

A real journey de strength, this publication records the transformation of 1 Indian literature, Tamil, below the impression of colonialism and Western modernity. whereas Tamil is a residing language, it's also India’s moment oldest classical language subsequent to Sanskrit, and has a literary background that is going again over thousand years. at the foundation of intensive archival examine, Sascha Ebeling tackles a number of concerns pertinent to Tamil elite literary construction and intake through the 19th century. those comprise the functioning and decline of conventional platforms during which poet-scholars have been patronized by way of non secular associations, landowners, and native kings; the anatomy of adjustments in textual practices, genres, types, poetics, issues, tastes, and audiences; and the function of literature within the politics of social reform, gender, and incipient nationalism. The paintings concludes with a dialogue of the main amazing literary improvement of the time—the emergence of the Tamil novel.

“Colonizing the world of phrases is an incredible contribution to the research of Tamil literature … The booklet provides a superb, unique photo of the biographies, writings and contexts of a few of crucial authors in Tamil of the 19th century.” — Relegere: stories in faith and Reception

“…[Ebeling] offers a close philological research of the Tamil texts, specially the poetics of Minatcicundaram Pillai and the Pulavars and the emergence of the Tamil novel. The transliterated Tamil texts following the epilogue make this publication worthwhile indeed.” — CHOICE

“This is a pathbreaking examine of textual fabrics that experience no longer been tested prior to in an English-language book. It fills an enormous hole in our figuring out of nineteenth-century literary tradition in South India in particular and in India generally.” —Srilata Raman, writer of Self-Surrender (Prapatti)to God in Śrīvaiṣṇavism: Tamil Cats and Sanskrit Monkeys

“This booklet is impeccably grounded in philological services, and the writer monitors mastery of the language and the advanced texts that he discusses. the full publication is conceived with nice elegance.” — Indira Viswanathan Peterson, coeditor of Tamil Geographies: Cultural structures of area and position in South India

Sascha Ebeling is Assistant Professor of South Asian Languages and Civilizations on the collage of Chicago.