Modern Indian Literature as Cosmopolis

Conversations with Hanuman

Didier Coste

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English

Routledge
09 October 2024

Literary studies: post-colonial literature; Regional studies; Regional geography

Series: Routledge Studies in Comparative Literature

This book redefines modern Indian literature from a cosmopolitan comparative perspective inclusive of literature in English from India and the diaspora, in native languages, and works by non-Indians. It shows how, since the mid-19th century, Indian literary modernity pursued the conjunction of the sensuous and ethical/spiritual that characterized its three traditions (Sanskritik, Persian, and folk culture) while the encounter, both receptive and oppositional, with “the West” vastly expanded the Indian literary sphere. Aesthetics and ethics are not antithetical in the Indian cultural space, but the quest for an exclusive Indian identity versus universalist approaches offsets concerns for social justice as well as enjoyable embodied communication. The literary constellation, in many languages, now formed in and around India can be better apprehended as a virtual Cosmopolis, a commonwealth of elaborate emotions. The versatile figure of Hanuman metaphorically flies across this Ocean of Stories to make us discover new worlds of experience.

By: Didier Coste
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
Weight: 757g
ISBN: 9781032749105
ISBN 10: 1032749105
Series: Routledge Studies in Comparative Literature
Pages: 310
Publication Date: 09 October 2024
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Acknowledgments Preface Introduction: Indialab and the Wild Kromosome Part 1 – Sites of Literary Thought: Theorizing with “India” Introduction: Complexity as Cliché and as Field Extension 1 Indian Literature as a Comparative Exercise 2 World Literature: Home and/or the World? 3 Postcoloniality: Beyond and Besides 4 Rasa, Dhvani, Raga, Reading Part 2 – Versatile (Mis)understandings Introduction: Marabar Caves Forever—a Mystique of Unknowing? 5 Firangi Visions 6 Divided Togetherness: Maitreyi and Mircea 7 Elusive, Liminal and Imagined Indiannesses Part 3 – Transmission, Transformation, Transgression Introduction: Indian Untranslatables and Transmission 8 Transnation, Translation, Heteroglossia 9 Transgender and Transgenre 10 Form and Metamorphoses in Poetry Part 4 – Fictional and Argumentative Aesthetics Introduction: Aesthetic Dimensions in Practice 11 Aesthetics of Disorder and Disaster 12 Aesthetics of Blood and Flesh 13 Participation and Embodiment in Arundhati Roy’s Non-Fiction Part 5 – Benefiting from Loss Introduction: Days of Future Past and Past Futures 14 Gods and Ghosts in Our Backyard 15 History into Fiction or Vice Versa 16 Comparative Exclusions 17 Unfulfilled Femininities Postscript: Vagrant Non-Endings: A Conversation with Dr. Gautam Chakrabarti Work Cited Index

Didier Coste is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at Université Bordeaux Montaigne. He has taught in Belgium, Australia, France, Spain, the United States, Canada, and Tunisia and was twice a fellow of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His book Narrative as Communication (1989) has become a Narrative Theory classic. The collection Migrating Minds: Theories and Practices of Cultural Cosmopolitanism (Routledge 2022) co-edited with Christina Kkona and Nicoletta Pireddu was awarded the René Wellek Prize 2023 of the ACLA for the best edited collection in Comparative Literature and is prolonged by the Migrating Minds Journal of Cultural Cosmopolitanism. Coste’s methodological sum A Cosmopolitan Approach to Literature: Against Origins and Destinations (Routledge 2023) laid the theoretical foundations for the present book. Coste is also a trilingual poet and novelist; Indian Poems, his latest collection, was published by the legendary Writers Workshop of Calcutta in 2019. As a literary translator, he was the recipient of a major French award in 1977.

Reviews for Modern Indian Literature as Cosmopolis: Conversations with Hanuman

"Coste presents in full bloom what Goethe would have just about sown the seeds for in his ""Conversations with Eckermann"" – the great herbarium of World Literature. For, when asked to fetch just one herb to revive the fatally wounded Lakshmana, Hanuman would have rather lifted and brought the whole herbarium, nay the entire mountain. For, in a more than 'cosmic' leap, the young Hanuman could dare swallow the Sun itself; with a mere sway of his burning tail, he could consign to flames Lanka, the grandest 'polis' of his times. In his provocative metaphorics of conversations with this Hanuman – whose place in the bamboo groves is playfully interchanged with Goethe's in Weimar – with Eckermann and himself as interlocutors, Didier Coste reimagines World Literature through the prism of Modern Indian Literature – a truly cosmopolitical and planetary gesture indeed. And, what a fantastic effort it has turned out to be, such a wonderful and thought-provoking book ... a must-read! Saugata Bhaduri, Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India"