Urdu Literary Culture examines the impact of political circumstances on vernacular (Urdu) literary culture through an in-depth study of the writings of Muhammad Hasan Askari, who lived during the Partition of India.

In late nineteenth-century South Asia, the arrival of print fostered a dynamic and interactive literary culture. There, within the pages of Urdu-language periodicals and newspapers, readers found a public sphere that not only catered to their interests but encouraged their reactions to featured content. Cosmopolitan Dreams brings this culture to light, showing how literature became a site in which modern daily life could be portrayed and satirized, the protocols of modernity challenged, and new futures imagined. Drawing on never-before-translated Urdu fiction and prose and focusing on the novel and satire, Jennifer Dubrow shows that modern Urdu literature was defined by its practice of self-critique and parody. Urdu writers resisted the cultural models offered by colonialism, creating instead a global community of imagination in which literary models could freely circulate and be readapted, mixed, and drawn upon to develop alternative lines of thinking. Highlighting the participation of readers and writers from diverse social and religious backgrounds, the book reveals an Urdu cosmopolis where lively debates thrived in newspapers, literary journals, and letters to the editor, shedding fresh light on the role of readers in shaping vernacular literary culture. Arguing against current understandings of Urdu as an exclusively Muslim language, Dubrow demonstrates that in the late nineteenth century, Urdu was a cosmopolitan language spoken by a transregional, transnational community that eschewed identities of religion, caste, and class. The Urdu cosmopolis pictured here was soon fractured by the forces of nationalism and communalism. Even so, Dubrow is able to establish the persistence of Urdu cosmopolitanism into the present and shows that Urdu’s strong tradition as a language of secular, critical modernity did not end in the late nineteenth century but continues to flourish in film, television, and on line. In lucid prose, Dubrow makes the dynamic world of colonial Urdu print culture come to life in a way that will interest scholars of modern Asian literatures, South Asian literature and history, cosmopolitanism, and the history of print culture.

This Path Breaking Work Raises Several New Questions About Urdu Literary Culture And Traces The Origins And Development Of Urdu Literary Thought From 1300 To 1850

Publisher Description

This text traces the development of Urdu literature from the earliest time to the 21st century. It contains biographical sketches of writers and critical appreciations of their work. An effort has been made to illustrate the relationships between the writers and their different movements.

poetics of belonging in the region. --Book Jacket.

Periodicals, Readers and the Making of a Modern Literary Culture is a study of literary periodicals and the Bengali public sphere at the turn of the twentieth century, the variety of interests and concerns that animated this domain and how literary relations were seen to constitute new social solidarities.

An indispensable translation of Jan Sahib's poetic ethnography of nineteenth-century performers-Pasha M. Khan, chair in Urdu Language and Culture, McGill University This is a truly extraordinary work, an important contribution to the cultural history of the subcontinent-Muneeza Shamsie, writer and literary critic The translation is experimental, challenging traditional expectations in its approach to rhyme and meter-Carla Petievich, South Asia Institute, The University of Texas at Austin The Incomparable Festival (Musaddas Tahniyat-e-Jashn-e-Benazir) by Mir Yar Ali (whose pen name was Jan Sahib) is a little known but sumptuous masterpiece of Indo-Islamic literary culture, presented here for the first time in English translation. The long poem, written in rhyming sestet stanzas, is about the royal festival popularly called jashn-e-benazir(the incomparable festival), inaugurated in 1866 by the Nawab Kalb-e-Ali Khan (r. 1865-87) with the aim of promoting art, culture and trade in his kingdom at Rampur in northern India. The task of commemorating the sights and wonders of the festival was given to the hugely popular writer of rekhti verse, the tart and playful sub-genre of the ghazal, reflecting popular women's speech, of which Jan Sahib is one of the last practitioners. Structured as an ode to the nawab, the poem is a world-album depicting various classes on the cusp of social upheaval. They include the elite, distinguished artists and commoners, brought together at the festivities, blurring the distinction between poetry, history and biography, and between poetic convention and social description. The book is a veritable archive of the legendary khayal singers, percussionists, and instrumentalists, courtesans, boy-dancers, poets, storytellers (dastango) and reciters of elegies (marsiyago). But, above all, the poem gives voice to the 'lowest' denizens of the marketplace by bringing to light their culinary tastes, artisanal products, religious rituals and beliefs, and savoury idioms, thereby focusing on identities of caste and gender in early modern society. This Penguin Classics edition will be of interest not just to the Urdu and Hindi literary historian, but to specialists and readers interested in the histories of music, dance, and the performative arts, as well as scholars of gender and sexuality in South Asia. Lovers of Urdu poetry will find in it a forgotten masterpiece.

Though Barely A Hundred Years Old, The Urdu Short Story, Or Afsana', Has Established Itself At The Forefront Of Urdu Literature. Emerging As A Discrete Narrative Genre With Munshi Premchand, It Gained Momentum With The Progressive Writers' Movement In The 1930S. The Partition Of The Subcontinent In 1947 Introduced New Dynamics Into The Genre As Writers Grappled With Emerging Trends Of Modernism And Symbolism As Well As With A Depleted Readership In India And The Challenge Of Establishing A New Literary Tradition Commensurate With A New Nationhood In Pakistan. The Penguin Book Of Classic Urdu Stories Brings Together Sixteen Memorable Tales That Have Influenced Generations Of Readers. From Saadat Hasan Manto'S Immortal Partition Narrative Toba Tek Singh' And The Harrowing Realism Of Premchand'S The Shroud' To The Whimsical Strains Of Qurratulain Hyder'S Confessions Of St Flora Of Georgia' And The Daring Experimentation Of Khalida Husain'S Millipede', This Definitive Collection Represents The Best Of Short Fiction In Urdu. In The Process, It Provides A Glimpse Of The Works Of Acclaimed Masters On Both Sides Of The Border Ismat Chughtai And Ashfaq Ahmad, Rajinder Singh Bedi And Intizar Husain, Krishan Chander And Hasan Manzar, Naiyer Masud And Ikramullah.

This book sets out an unconventional literary history of progressive Urdu poetry by Pakistani women in the twentieth century. It introduces the resilient voices of poets who tread a fine line between the secular and sacred in an Islamic society to articulate a new feminist aesthetic.