HIN 330/384 Love & Lovers in Hindi Literature

Transcription

1 HIN 330/384 Love & Lovers in Hindi Literature Spring 2014 Instructor: Rupert Snell office ) 12:30-2:00 MEZ Office hours: TTh 2:00 3:30, in Hindi Urdu Flagship, WCH 4.104c This Hindi-medium course will explore various depictions of love in pre-modern and modern literature, broadly defined from medieval classics to modern love-letters. We will examine how some genres of poetry cross the boundaries between human and divine love; we will study the traditional categories of heroes and heroines, and the conventionalized contexts in which lovers meet (or lament when separated); we will examine the aesthetics of the texts, observing what is lost when they are translated. Certain romantic tropes will be traced back to their forebears in earlier Indian tradition; and we will also sample some contemporary equivalents from modern poetry, prose fiction, and cinema. Background readings will mostly be in English, and our study of Hindi originals will be supported by a wider sampling in English translation. Both Hindi and English will be used in our classes, which will follow an interactive seminar format. Students will choose individual genres or works to research and present to the group, developing their ideas into a term paper; graduate members of the class (HIN 384 students) must demonstrate sophistication in their critical appreciation of a work, concept, or genre. Papers are essays are to be written in English (or Hindi, if you prefer.) Previous knowledge of pre-modern Hindi is not required or expected; the prerequisite for the class is four semesters of Hindi, or demonstrable equivalent knowledge. Full attendance is required. For more information or help, contact rupertsnell@austin.utexas.edu any time. ASSESSMENT & GRADING There will be no practicum, alas. Weekly quizzes on readings 20% First 5 minutes of Tuesday classes Participation 20% Two reaction 10% 20% due February 20 and March 6 Two 10% 20% due March 27 and April 17 Term paper 20% due May 9 QUIZZES: each Tuesday s quiz will be on the designated reading for that week, as indicated by a Friday Mail the week before. REACTION PAPERS: HIN 330 students, writing c. 800 words, should summarize the assigned article or chapter, and offer some thoughts on its perceptions on the material; HIN 384 students, writing about 1500 words, should add to this an analysis of the author s methodology. ESSAYS: HIN 330 students should write c words, on the topic and title provided. HIN 384 students should write c words. All students are advised to submit draft outlines as part of their preparation for the essay. TERM PAPER: 3000 words for HIN 330, 4,500 words for HIN 384. Topics will follow students individual interests and must be agreed before Spring Break; keep in touch with the instructor as you develop this piece advice is available at every step along the way. The presentation in the last two weeks should be on the subject of your term paper; this will allow you to get feedback and ideas from the class. HIN 384 students are expected to read beyond the syllabus as they research their term paper. i

2 SYLLABUS & SCHEDULE 1 January 14 & 16 A LANGUAGE FOR LOVE The sweetness of Braj Bhāṣā: prose and poetry. Hindi texts: three kavitta verses by Raskhān; the vārtā hagiography of Raskhān. Reading: Archer, The Loves of Krishna 2 January 21 & 23 HEROINES & HEROES Who loves whom, how, when, and where: traditional typologies of lover & beloved; poetic tropes. Hindi texts: Rahīm, Nagar-śobhā and Barvai nāyikā-bhed (commentary for these is online). Reading: Rākeśagupta, Studies in nāyaka-nāyikā-bheda. 3 January 28 & 30 THE smoldering HEART Love, desire, and the bittersweet pain of love-in-separation in devotional & courtly poetry. Hindi texts: Sūrdās, Kabīr, Bihārīlāl. Readings: Hawley Sūr Dās: poet, singer, saint; Vaudeville, Kabīr pp February 4 & 6 SUFI ALLEGORies OF LOVE Studying the translations and analysis of Aditya Behl. Hindi text: Madhumālatī, pp , (verses In praise of love; Madhumālatī described). Reading: Behl & Weightman, Madhumālatī, Introduction (pp. xii-xlvi) and verses (pp. 3-43). 5 February 11 & 13 devotional LOVE & FRIENDSHIP The story of Krishna s friendship with Sudama: the evolution of a narrative Hindi text: Selections from Narottamdās Sudāmā carita Readings: Bhāgavata purāṇa pp ; Snell Devotion rewarded. 6 February 18 & 20 [य द र% reaction paper 1 due on 20th!] SMALL-TOWN LOVE IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA Serenity, passion and magical realism in Vinod Kumar Shukla s novel Dīvār mẽ ek khiṛkī rahtī thī Hindi text: Dīvār mẽ ek khiṛkī rahtī thī, pp Readings: Stark 2014; Snell note. 7 February 25 & 27 LOVE, LAMENT, & innuendo IN FOLK POETRY An encounter with Bārahmāsā songs of the twelve-month ; and some saucy mukrī verses. Hindi texts: Vaudeville s selections from Mīrā pp and Jāyasī 64-79; Gilbertson pp Reading: Vaudeville, Bārahmāsā pp ii

3 8 March 4 & 6 [य द र% reaction paper 2 due on 6th!] LOVE ON THE WEB How do ordinary people write about love in 2014? Hindi texts: selections from the contemporary media. Reading: Orsini, Love letters. 9 March 11 & 13 SPRING BREAK (Love in your own time...) 10 March 18 & 20 LOVE IN THE RAMAYANA Rāma and Sītā s first encounter in the flower garden: a scene from Tulsī s Awadhi Rāmcaritmānas. Hindi text: pp (dohās from Bālkāṇḍ) Reading: McGregor Tulsidas ; Tulsidas trans. Hill pp March 25 & 27 [य द र% essay 1 due on 27th! ] LOVE IN MINIATURE Erotic & romantic themes in manuscript illuminations & their associated texts. Hindi text: facsimiles of manuscript folios. Reading: Dehejia, The body adorned, pp April 1 & 3 THE LOVE THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME Homosexual love in fiction and film: Chocolate by Pandey Bechan Sharma Ugra ; Deepa Mehta s film Fire. Hindi text: Ugra s short story Cākleṭ. Reading: Vanita, Chocolate, and other writings on male homoeroticism Introduction. 13 April 8 & 10 LOVE AND MARRIAGE Family entanglements in Mira Nair s film Monsoon Wedding; widowhood in Deepa Mehta s film Water. (Films to be viewed in advance; discussions to be student-led.) Reading: Dwyer, Kiss or Tell? 14 April 15 & 17 [य द र% essay 2 due on 17th!] THUMRI Lyric, subtext, and performance in ठ"मर, a traditional genre of love songs. Hindi texts: selections from Du Perron, Hindi poetry in a musical genre: ṭhumrī lyrics. Reading: Du Perron, Ṭhumrī...the female voice. 15 April 22 & 24 STUDENT PRESENTATIONS (I) topics to be agreed two weeks in advance. 16 April 29 & May 1 STUDENT PRESENTATIONS (II) topics to be agreed two weeks in advance. य द र% Term paper due 9 May! iii

4 Bibliography Archer, W.G., 1957: The loves of Krishna in Indian painting and poetry. London, Allen & Unwin. Behl, Aditya, and Simon Weightman, 2000: Madhumālatī [of Manjhan]: an Indian Sufi romance. Oxford, OUP. Behl, Aditya, 2011: The magic doe: Qutban Suhravardi s Mirigavati. New York, OUP. Busch, Allison, 2009: Braj beyond Braj: classical Hindi in the Mughal world. New Delhi, India International Centre. Busch, Allison, 2011: The poetry of kings: the classical Hindi literature of Mughal India. New York, OUP. Dehejia, Vidya, 2009: The body adorned: dissolving boundaries between sacred and profane in Indian art. New York, Columbia. Dehejia, Vidya, 1998: Love in Asian art and culture. Washington, Smithsonian. Desai, Vishakha N., 2000: Loves of Rādhā in the Rasikapriyā verses and paintings. In Ars Orientalis, Vol. 30, Supplement 1, pp Du Perron, Lalita, 2002: Ṭhumrī: a discussion of the female voice of Hindustani music, in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Feb. 2002), pp Du Perron, Lalita, 2007: Hindi poetry in a musical genre: ṭhumrī lyrics. London, Routledge. Dwyer, Rachel, 2006: Kiss or tell? Declaring love in Hindi films, in Francesca Orsini (ed.), Love in South Asia, pp Gilbertson, G.W., 1900: The assembly of mirth: a translation into English of the Sabhá Bilása. Benares, Medical Hall Press. Online at Gupta, Charu, 2001: Sexuality, obscenity, community: women, muslims and the Hindu public in colonial India. Delhi, Permanent Black. Giri, Kamal, 2004: The nayika in Barahmasa paintings, in Harsha V. Dehejia (ed.), A celebration of love: the romantic heroine in the Indian arts. Delhi, Roli Books, pp Hawley, J.S., 2009: The memory of love: Sūrdās sings to Krishna. New York, OUP. Hawley, J.S., 1984: Sūr Dās: poet, singer, saint. Seattle, University of Washington Press. Kaviraj, Sudipta, 2006: Tagore and transformations in the ideals of love, in Francesca Orsini (ed.), Love in South Asia, pp Martin, Nancy, 2007: Rajasthan: Mira and her poetry, in Edwin F. Bryant (ed.), Krishna: a sourcebook. New York, OUP, pp Mehrotra, Arvind Krishna, 1991: The absent traveller: Prākrit love poetry from the Gāthāsaptaśatī of Sātavāhana Hāla. Delhi, Ravi Dayal. Orsini, Francesca (ed.), 2006: Love letters, in Love in South Asia: a cultural history. Cambridge, CUP, pp Orsini, Francesca (ed.), 2009: Hindi and Urdu barahmasas in print, in Print and pleasure: popular literature and entertaining fictions in colonial North India. Ranikhet, Permanent Black, pp Rākeśagupta, 1967: Studies in nāyaka-nāyikā-bheda. Aligarh, Granthayan. Schimmel, Annemarie, 1979: Eros heavenly and not so heavenly in Sufi literature and life, in A. Lutfi al-sayyid Marsot (ed.), Society and the sexes in medieval Islam. Malibu, Undena, pp iv

5 Schomer, Karine, 1983: Mahadevi Varma and the Chhayavad age of modern Hindi poetry. Berkeley, UCP. Selby, Martha, 1991: Afterword in Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, The absent traveller, pp Selby, Martha, 2011: Tamil love poetry: the five hundred short poems of the Aiṅkurunūru, an early thirdcentury anthology. New York, Columbia University Press. Shackle, Christopher, 2006: The shifting sands of love, in Orsini (ed.), Love in South Asia, pp Sharma, Pandey Bechan [ Ugra ], 2009: Chocolate and other writings on male homoeroticism, trans. Ruth Vanita. North Carolina, Duke UP. PCL electronic resource site.ebrary.com.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/lib/utexas/docdetail.action?docid= Snell, Rupert, 1991: The Hindi classical tradition, a Braj Bhāṣā reader. London, SOAS. Online at Snell, Rupert, 1992: Devotion rewarded: the Sudāmā carit of Narottamdās, in C. Shackle and R. Snell (eds.), The Indian narrative: perspectives and patterns. Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz, pp Snell, Rupert, 2014: On translating Bihārī s Satsaī. Forthcoming in a festschrift for Harish Trivedi edited by Ruth Vanita. Snell, Rupert, forthcoming: The Sudāmā carita of Narottamdās, in second edition of The Hindi classical tradition, a Braj Bhāṣā reader. Vanita, Ruth, 2012: Gender, sex and the city: Urdu Rekhtī poetry, New Delhi, Orient Longman. Vaudeville, Charlotte: 1986: Bārahmāsā in Indian literatures: songs of the twelve months in Indo-Aryan literatures. Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass. Coursebook contents: the texts Raskhān: vārtā prose hagiography; savaiyā and kavitt stanzas 1 Rahīm: Nagar-śobhā 7 Rahīm: Barvai nāyikā-bhed 15 Kabīr: Granthāvalī Birah kau aṅg 22 Kabīr, trans. Vaudeville: Love in separation 29 Bihārīlāl: dohās from the Satsaī 35 Sūrdās: padas from the Sūrsāgar 39 Manjhan: two extracts from Madhumāltī, vv and Narottamdās: selections from Sudāmā-carita 68 Vinod Kumar Shukla: a passage from the novel Dīvār mẽ ek khiṛkī rahtī thī 72 Jāyasī and Mīrābāī: Bārahmāsā selections from Vaudeville 85 Lallūlāl, ed. & trans. Gilbertson: Mukrī verses from Sabhā Bilās 96 Tulsīdās: Rāmcaritmānas, verses from Bālkāṇḍ 102 Bihārīlāl and Sūrdās: manuscript folios from the Satsaī and the Sūrsāgar 111 Ṭhumrī selections from Du Perron, Hindi poetry in a musical genre 118 v