A political history of literature : Vidyapati and the fifteenth century

Author / Creator

Jha, Pankaj, author

Available as

Online

Summary

This title studies the 15th-century north India through an intimate exploration of three compositions of the poet-scholar, Vidyapati: a Sanskrit treatise on writing, a celebratory biography in Apab...

This title studies the 15th-century north India through an intimate exploration of three compositions of the poet-scholar, Vidyapati: a Sanskrit treatise on writing, a celebratory biography in Apabhramsa, and a collection of mytho-historical tales in Sanskrit. An intimate linguistic, literary, and historical study of these texts reveals a world that is marked by a range of ideas, expertise, literary tropes, ethical regimes and historical consciousness drawn eclectically from sources that we are used to thinking of as belonging to 'diverse' politico-cultural traditions. Vidyapati laced these ideas with contemporary flavour, classicising impulse and useable forms. He was not alone in doing so. As the book shows, many of the ideals extolled in 15th-century literary cultures appear to be those more appropriate for ambitious and expansive political formations associated with an imperial state.

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