This phenomenon in the context of literary writing has had its repercussions also on the writing of literary historiography, where the turn toward cultural studies in the s among western academia has resulted in a tectonic shift in the approach to the writing of literary history as well. Earlier, foundational texts of literary history were concerned not merely with mapping the territory, but also with evaluating the field, praising the worthwhile, and tracing the evolution of the literary text; in short, with both qualities that were inherent in the text, as well as the social history in which the text was embedded.
Thus Boris Ford, the editor of the hugely popular 10 volume The New Pelican Guide to English Literature set out his agenda in four points in his general introduction in the following way. Subsequently, with the development of poststructuralism and new historicism and the diminishing of literary space, western academia turned towards the cultural studies model of literary historiography. Literary history belonged to particular languages in India, and each region crafted its own, out of their individual literary resources and traditions beginning in the late 19th century; similarly the hugely important arena of the writer or literary critic engaging with the production of literature was one that flourished variously in the varied languages of India.
Criticism written in English had dealt with Indian writing in English. In the introduction Stuart Blackburn and Vasudha Dalmia trace the origins of the modern study of Indian literary history to the 18th century, when Indian writers, in concert with British Orientalist researchers, began to compile and comment on their individual literary traditions.
Medieval accounts of poets and anthologies of poetry had existed in the Indian languages, the editors mention, but the European impulse, itself a recent 18th century phenomenon, towards recording cultural pasts came into its own only in the 19th century, when literary history began to be interpreted in a romantic-nationalistic mode. To substantiate their claim, they recover a significant body of literature from late medieval and early modern south India.
And if it could, how would that change our ideas of our literary past and our relation to our forebears? Speculative questions apart, the most welcome aspect of the volume under review is its focus on 19th century writing in India. An ignored and undervalued period, the 19th century has yet been seminal, not merely as a precursor, but in its own right, to Indian modernity. The quality of writing in this period has been astonishingly high, the range and output of its writers bewilderingly diverse, the quickness of mind and sharpness of insight displayed by its thinkers enviable.
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The best way to make people aware of a book? Reviews in large venues with a nice platform and a passionate book loving readership. I have lost three or four Amazon reviews, but my review in the Los Angeles Review of Books is still there, and it still gets hits.
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