Fiction as History : The Novel and the City in Modern North India

Dalmia, Vasudha

State University of New York Press（2019/08発売）

• 製本 Hardcover:ハードカバー版／ページ数 458 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9781438476056
• DDC分類 891.4309

Full Description

Explains the Hindi novel's role in anticipating and creating the story of middle-class modernity and modernization in North India.

Vasudha Dalmia offers a panoramic view of the intellectual and cultural life of North India over a century, from the aftermath of the 1857 uprising to the end of the Nehruvian era. The North's historical cities, rooted in an Indo-Persianate culture, began changing more slowly than the Presidency towns founded by the British. Dalmia takes up eight canonical Hindi novels set in six of these cities-Agra, Allahabad, Banaras, Delhi, Lahore, and Lucknow-to trace a literary history of domestic and political cataclysms. Her exploration of the emerging Hindu middle classes, changing personal and professional ambitions, and new notions of married life provides a vivid sense of urban modernity. She argues that the radical social transformations associated with post-1857 urban restructuring, and the political flux resulting from social reform, Gandhian nationalism, communalism, Partition, and the Cold War shaped the realm of the intimate as much as the public sphere. Love and friendship, notions of privacy, attitudes to women's work, and relationships within households are among the book's major themes.

Contents

Preface

Introduction: North Indian Cities and the Hindi Novel

Part I. Towards Modernity

1. Merchant Lives in Mughal Agra and British Delhi

2. Wife and Courtesan in Banaras

3. The Holy City as the Field of Action

4. Lahore, Delhi, and the Bitter Truth of Independence

Part II. Modernist Conundrums

5. City, Civilization, and Nature

6. Culture Wars and a Cult Novel

7. On the Rooftops of Agra

8. Culture, Claustrophobia, and the New Capital of the Nation

Epilogue
Index