Nets of Awareness

by Pritchett, Frances W.

• ISBN13: 9780520083868
• ISBN10: 0520083865
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-05-01
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr on Demand

Summary

Frances Pritchett's lively, compassionate book joins literary criticism with history to explain how Urdu poetry--long the pride of Indo-Muslim culture--became devalued in the second half of the nineteenth century. This abrupt shift, Pritchett argues, was part of the backlash following the violent Indian Mutiny of 1857. She uses the lives and writings of the distinguished poets and critics Azad and Hali to show the disastrous consequences--culturally and politically--of British rule. The British had science, urban planning--and Wordsworth. Azad and Hali had a discredited culture and a metaphysical, sexually ambiguous poetry that differed radically from English lyric forms. Pritchett's beautiful reconstruction of the classical Urdu poetic vision allows us to understand one of the world's richest literary traditions and also highlights the damaging potential of colonialism.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
A Note on Transliteration
Preface
A Garden Now Destroyed
The Lost World	p. 3
Beyond a Sea of Blood	p. 16
Reconstruction	p. 31
The Water of Life	p. 46
Flowers on the Branch of Invention
Tazkirahs	p. 63
Poems Two Lines Long	p. 77
The Art and Craft of Poetry	p. 91
The Mind and Heart in Poetry	p. 106
Light from English Lanterns
The Cycles of Time	p. 127
From Persian to English	p. 140
"Natural Poetry"	p. 155
Poetry and Morality	p. 169
Epilogue	p. 185
Appendix: A Ghazal Observed	p. 191
Glossary	p. 195
Notes	p. 201
Bibliography	p. 225
Index	p. 231
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