Full Description
How perceptions of land and space influence social and aesthetic conditions in the Tamil region of India.
This interdisciplinary work explores how people in the Tamil region of India think about space and land, and how this, in turn, influences the creation of the social and aesthetic world they live in. Contributors focus on the notion of geography in its strictest sense, on verbal descriptions of land and space and how these descriptions build and inform diverse social and aesthetic realities. The essays examine "texts" drawn from a range of time periods and a variety of sources in Tamil culture, including imaginative literature, historical events and narratives, religious rituals, and daily life in contemporary Tamil Nadu. The book clearly demonstrates the ways in which early Tamil aesthetic and linguistic paradigms have survived to the present as living, vital expressions through which contemporary boundaries and social identities are shaped and constructed.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Dialogues of Space, Desire, and Gender in Tamil Cankam Poetry
Martha Ann Selby
2. Four Spatial Realms in Tirukkōvaiyār
Norman J. Cutler
3. The Drama of the Kurravañci Fortune-teller: Land, Landscape, and Social Relations in an Eighteenth-century Tamil Genre
Indira Viswanathan Peterson
4. Ruling in the Gaze of God: Thoughts on Kanchipuram's Mandala
D. Dennis Hudson
5. Cosmos, Realm, and Property in Early Medieval South India
Daud Ali
6. Sanctum and Gopuram at Madurai: Aesthetics of Akam and Puram in Tamil Temple Architecture
Samuel K. Parker
7. From Wasteland to Bus Stand: The Relocation of demons in Tamilnadu
Isabelle Clark-Decés
8. Waiting for Vellālakantarn: Narrative, Movement, and Making Place in a Tamil Village
Diane P. Mines
9. Permeable Homes: Domestic Service, Household Space, and the Vulnerability of Class Boundaries in Urban South India
Sara Dickey
10. Gender Plays: Socio-spatial Paradigms on the Tamil Popular Stage
Susan Seizer
Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index
