MODERN LITERATURES OF THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

Academic year
2025/2026 Syllabus of previous years
Official course title
LETTERATURE MODERNE DEL SUBCONTINENTE INDIANO
Course code
LT4055 (AF:452540 AR:328316)
Teaching language
Italian
Modality
On campus classes
ECTS credits
6
Degree level
Bachelor's Degree Programme
Academic Discipline
L-OR/19
Period
2nd Semester
Course year
3
Where
VENEZIA
This course falls within the characterizing courses which are part of the curriculum ISEA (India and South-East Asia) within the three year undergraduate degree course LICSAAM (Languages, societies and cultures of Asia and Mediterranean Africa). The classes of this course intend to complete the discourse developed during the courses of Hindi literature 1 and Urdu literature 1, with the aim of showing continuities and discontinuities in the creative mind of poets and writers in the two North-Indian vernaculars of hind and urdu, with particular focus on literary currents and intellectual trends peculiar to the 19th and 20th centuries.
This course intends to provide students an articulate insight into the rich and complex spectrum of literary culture in South Asia, with particular regard for the areas of the hindi and urdu languages. It wants to convey an understanding of the complex fashion and the impact left by the encounter of modern, European thought systems on the Indian mentality at large and the literary production in the Indian vernaculars in particular. Students will be expected to develop their own thoughts and approach to the study of secondary sources dealing with aspects concerning the literary culture of the 19th and 20th century.
A basic knowledge of the hindi (devanagari) and urdu (nastaliq) script systems, for the sake of reading and understanding some selected sample literary texts analyzed during classes.
1. The concept of literature through the lens of tradition and as re-defined by modern thought: differences and convergences.
2. The imposition of the colonialist mentality and the Bengali Renaissance: bengali as the language of the literary avant-garde and the role of Calcutta as the new capital of India.
3. Scholarization and the foundation of modern academic institutions in South Asia and their impact on the diffusion and fostering of modern, individualist thought systems.
4. The role and rising influence of journalism on the emerging urbanized middle-class and the growing importance of the essay as a literary genre: the desire for standardization.
5. The importance of the oral tradition and the role of narrative cycles transmitted by professional story-tellers (qissa-gu) and the popularity of the phantasy genre in prose literature.
6. Social reform and women's education as key concepts in the literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries: the end of Feudalism and the emerging mentality of egalitarism.
7. Progressive literature and the Progressive Writers' Movement: the prevailing secularism during the decades leading up to political independence in 1947.
8. The short story and the novel as channels of communication of the new generations of writers.
9. Poetry between traditional images and stylistic innovation: the case of the ghazal and the literary movement of the Chhayavada (School of shadows) in Hindi literature.
10. The regional novel (anchalik upanyas) and the model of socialism as a pattern for progress in the decades immediately following political independence in 1947.
11. The Nayi Kahani movement and the emerging literature of the urban middle-class in post-independence India.
12. The literature of Pakistan: from sufi visions to nationalist ideology and muslim identity: a panoramic.
13. The image of nature in poetry and the quest for self-realization among poets in modern South Asia.
14. The literature of Bangladesh: linguistic tensions and social dynamics in a new nation on an ancient territory.
15. Hindu nationalism and the search for a new outlook: the literary culture in 21 century South Asia.
Selected bibliography:
- Dasgupta, Subrata (2007): Bengal Renaissance: Identity and Creativity from Rammohun Roy to Rabindranath Tagore, New Delhi:,Permanent Black.
- Gaeffke, Peter (1978): Hindi Literature in the twentieth century, in A History of Indian Literature Series, Wiesbaden: Otto Harassowitz.
- Jindal, K.B. (1993, reprint): A History of Hindi Literature, Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, New Delhi.
- Pollock, Sheldon (editor, 2003): Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia, University of California Press.
- Zaidi, Nishat and Harder, Hans (editors, 2023): Language Ideologies and the Vernacular in Colonial and Postcolonial South Asia, New Delhi: Routledge India.
Oral examination of approximatively 20-25 minutes, during which students will be requested to develop a topic treated during classes in their own words and sustain a dialogue on specific themes which are part of the course program.
oral
28-30: Eccellent.
25-27: Good, with some imperfections.
18-24: Sufficient.
0-17: Insufficient (not passed).
Frontal classes and occasional seminars.
Regular attendance of classes is recommended.

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Human capital, health, education" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development

Definitive programme.
Last update of the programme: 25/03/2025