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This collection brings together nine essays, accompanied by nine short translations that expand the assumptions that have typically framed literary histories, and creatively re-draws their boundaries, both temporally and spatially. The essays, rooted in the humanities and informed by interdisciplinary area studies, explore multiple linkages between forms of print culture, linguistic identities, and diverse vernacular literary spaces in colonial and post-colonial South Asia. The accompanying translations—from Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, and Urdu—not only round out these scholarly explorations and comparisons, but invite readers to recognise the assiduous, intimate, and critical labour of expanding access to the vernacular archive, while also engaging with the challenges—linguistic, cultural, and political—of rendering vernacular articulations of gendered experience and embodiment in English. Collectively, the essays and translations foreground complex and politicised expressions of gender and genre in fictional and non-fictional print materials and thus draw meaningful connections between the vernacular and literature, the everyday and the marginals, and gender and sentiment. They expand vernacular literary archives, canons and genealogies, and push us to theorise the nature of writing in South Asia.

Literary Sentiments in the Vernacular is a significant new contribution to South Asian literary history and gender studies, and will be a great resource for academics, researchers, and advanced students of History, Literature, Cultural Studies, Politics, and Sociology.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies.

This collection brings together nine essays, accompanied by nine short translations that expand the assumptions that have typically framed literary histories, and creatively re-draws their boundaries, both temporally and spatially. The essays, rooted in the humanities and informed by interdisciplinary area studies, explore multiple linkages between forms of print culture, linguistic identities, and diverse vernacular literary spaces in colonial and post-colonial South Asia. The accompanying translations—from Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, and Urdu—not only round out these scholarly explorations and comparisons, but invite readers to recognise the assiduous, intimate, and critical labour of expanding access to the vernacular archive, while also engaging with the challenges—linguistic, cultural, and political—of rendering vernacular articulations of gendered experience and embodiment in English. Collectively, the essays and translations foreground complex and politicised expressions of gender and genre in fictional and non-fictional print materials and thus draw meaningful connections between the vernacular and literature, the everyday and the marginals, and gender and sentiment. They expand vernacular literary archives, canons and genealogies, and push us to theorise the nature of writing in South Asia.

Literary Sentiments in the Vernacular is a significant new contribution to South Asian literary history and gender studies, and will be a great resource for academics, researchers, and advanced students of History, Literature, Cultural Studies, Politics, and Sociology.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies.

This volume critically engages with recent formulations and debates regarding the status of the regional languages of the Indian subcontinent vis-à-vis English. It explores how language ideologies of the “vernacular” are positioned in relation to the language ideologies of English in South Asia.

The book probes into how we might move beyond the English-vernacular binary in India, explores what happened to “bhasha literatures” during the colonial and post-colonial periods and how to position those literatures by the side of Indian English and international literature. It looks into the ways vernacular community and political rhetoric are intertwined with Anglophone (national or global) positionalities and their roles in political processes.

This book will be of interest to researchers, students and scholars of literary and cultural studies, Indian Writing in English, Indian literatures, South Asian languages and popular culture. It will also be extremely valuable for language scholars, sociolinguists, social historians, scholars of cultural studies and those who understand the theoretical issues that concern the notion of “vernacularity”.

This volume critically engages with recent formulations and debates regarding the status of the regional languages of the Indian subcontinent vis-à-vis English. It explores how language ideologies of the “vernacular” are positioned in relation to the language ideologies of English in South Asia.

The book probes into how we might move beyond the English-vernacular binary in India, explores what happened to “bhasha literatures” during the colonial and post-colonial periods and how to position those literatures by the side of Indian English and international literature. It looks into the ways vernacular community and political rhetoric are intertwined with Anglophone (national or global) positionalities and their roles in political processes.

This book will be of interest to researchers, students and scholars of literary and cultural studies, Indian Writing in English, Indian literatures, South Asian languages and popular culture. It will also be extremely valuable for language scholars, sociolinguists, social historians, scholars of cultural studies and those who understand the theoretical issues that concern the notion of “vernacularity”.

This book examines the validity of the notion of the ‘vernacular’ and the position of the so-called ‘vernaculars’ in colonial and postcolonial settings. It addresses recent formulations and debates regarding the status of regional languages of South Asia in relation to English. The authors explore the range of meanings the term has assumed and trace a history of contestation since the colonial age. They contend that though the ‘vernacular’ in South Asia has, since the nineteenth century, often operated as a hegemonic category relegating the languages thus designated to an inferior status, those languages (and other cultural formations labelled as ‘vernacular’) have also received empowering impulses and vested with qualities like groundedness and strength. The book highlights the need for a critical discussion of the notion of the ‘vernacular’ in the context of the ongoing rise of Anglophonia in South Asia as a whole and post-liberalisation India in particular.

The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of literary and culture studies, history, postcolonial studies, and South Asian studies.

This book examines the validity of the notion of the ‘vernacular’ and the position of the so-called ‘vernaculars’ in colonial and postcolonial settings. It addresses recent formulations and debates regarding the status of regional languages of South Asia in relation to English. The authors explore the range of meanings the term has assumed and trace a history of contestation since the colonial age. They contend that though the ‘vernacular’ in South Asia has, since the nineteenth century, often operated as a hegemonic category relegating the languages thus designated to an inferior status, those languages (and other cultural formations labelled as ‘vernacular’) have also received empowering impulses and vested with qualities like groundedness and strength. The book highlights the need for a critical discussion of the notion of the ‘vernacular’ in the context of the ongoing rise of Anglophonia in South Asia as a whole and post-liberalisation India in particular.

The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of literary and culture studies, history, postcolonial studies, and South Asian studies.