Skip to main navigation menu Skip to main content Skip to site footer

Comparative Literary History in Assamese: Some Possibilities

Abstract

The essay attempts to explore some possibilities of Comparative Literary History with respect to Assamese literature. Writing a literary history is a complex business, and the tenets underlying its conceptualisation and execution have often been determined by factors other than purely ‘literary’ ones. In the essay, the conceptual dimensions of literary historiography are examined in relation to its recently developed nexus with comparative literature and cultural studies. Within this theoretical framework, the essay briefly touches upon the development of literary historiography within the Indian context in the precolonial, colonial and postcolonial periods, and subsequently moves on to discuss its position vis-a-vis Assamese literature, particularly in the latter’s institutionalisation as a subject for graduate and postgraduate study under Gauhati University, Assam, in the post-Independence period. The essay deals specifically with the efforts of Professor Satyendranath Sarma, prominent academician and literary historian of Assam, towards the academic study of Assamese literary history. It explores the possibilities of comparative literary history in Assamese—one that is not based on a linear narrative of succeeding generations of poets and writers recorded and documented under a progressive model of impact and response, but rather a history of literary reception with many complex and multidimensional narratives often at loggerheads with each other.

Key words: Literary Historiography, Comparative Literature, Comparative Cultural Studies, Indian Literature, Assamese Literature, Satyendranath Sarma

Keywords

Literary Historiography, Comparative Literature, Comparative Cultural Studies, Indian Literature, Assamese Literature, Satyendranath Sarma

PDF

References

References
Barua , Birinchi Kumar. 1964. History of Assamese Literature. Delhi: Sahitya Akademi.
Baruah, Manjeet. 2012. Frontier Cultures: A Social History of Assamese Literature. New Delhi: Routledge India.
Bate, Jonathan. 1989. Shakespearean Constitutions: Politics, Theatre, Criticism, 1730-1830. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Blackburn, Stuart and Vasudha Dalmia (ed.). 2004. India’s Literary History: Essays on the Nineteenth Century, New Delhi: Permanent Black.
Cornis-Pope, Marcel and John Neubauer (eds). 2004. "General Introduction." In History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe: Junctures and Disjunctures in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Das, Sisir Kumar. 1991. A History of Indian Literature, 1800-1910. Delhi: Sahitya Akademi.
Green, William A. “Periodizing World History”, History and Theory, Vol. 34, No. 2, (May, 1995), pp. 99-111.
Greenblatt, Stephen. 1988. Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Perkins, David. 1992. Is Literary History Possible?. Baltimore, London: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Phukan, K.N. 1996. ‘Bezbaroa’s Analytical Perspectives in Sankaradeva Studies’. In Ranjit Kumar Dev Goswami (ed.), Essays on Sankaradeva, Appendix-A. Guwahati: Forum for Sankaradeva Studies and Lawyer’s Book Stall, pp.138-160.
Pollock, Sheldon. 2006. The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India. California: University of California Press.
Pollock, Sheldon., ed.2003. Literary Cultures in History: Reconstruction from South Asia. California: University of California Press.
Sarma, Satyendranath. 1962. Asomiya Natya Sahitya. Guwahati: Soumar Prakash
Sarma, Satyendranath. 1965. Asomiya Upanyashar Bhumika. Guwahati: Soumar Prakash.
Sarma, Satyendranath. 1970. Asomiya Kahini Kavyar Prabah. Guwahati: Bani Prakash.
Sarma, Satyendranath. 1976. Asomiya Upanyashar Gatidhara. Guwahati: Soumar Prakash.
Sarma, Satyendranath. 1981. Asomiya Sahityar Samikshatmak Itibritta. Guwahati: Soumar Prakash.
Singh, Ahanthem Homen. 2011. ‘Historiography of Literature for Literatures with a Short Literary History’, Unpublished MPhil Dissertation. Submitted to the Department of Modern Indian Languages and Literary Studies, University Of Delhi.
Totosy De Zepetnek, Steven. (ed.). 2003. Comparative Literature and Comparative Cultural Studies. Indiana: Purdue University Press.
Valdes, Mario and Linda Hutcheon. Rethinking Literary History— Comparatively, ACLS Occasional Paper, No. 27.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.