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Literatures of the Indian Subcontinent

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Course Type Course Code No. Of Credits
Discipline Core NSUS1EN201 4

Course Coordinator and Team:                   SES Faculty

Email of course coordinator:                       pcbabed@aud.ac.in 

Pre-requisites:                                               No

Course Description:

This course comprises texts from various genres written in the Indian subcontinent. It is designed as a survey course to explore how writers in the Indian subcontinent have responded to some important political and social issues of their times. The attempt has been to include texts from different languages and regions as well as from diverse forms of literature

Course Objectives:

  • Students will be able to familiarize with the literary traditions across genres and media from ancient times down to the contemporary period.

Course Outcomes:

  • This course would help the students understand the issues and debates that these literatures portray.
  • The students develop critical thinking and writing skills.

Brief description of the modules:

Module One: This module introduces the students to the literatures written in the ancient period across three different literary traditions and languages, such as Classical Sanskrit drama, Tamil Sangam poetry and earliest examples of poems written by Buddhist nuns in Magadhi Prakrit.

Module Two: This module introduces the student to the long and very important traditions of Bhakti poetry that engulfs nearly the entire Indian subcontinent beginning from the south and spreading in all directions such as Sufi poetry etc.

Module Three: This module encompasses the modern section with the 19th Century freedom struggle and the issues of Indian writing in English, along with writings from Nepal, Sri Lanka and Tibetan diaspora providing a complex picture of the conflict read in contemporary realities of the subcontinent.

Module Four: This module views some contemporary concerns in the Indian Sub-continent such as caste, class struggles, gender discrimination, and issues related to ethnicity and environment.

Assessment Plan

S.No

Assessment

Weightage

1

assignment

20%

2

Project/Presentation

30%

3

End-Semester Exam

50%

Readings:

  • Bhasa. “Karnabharam.” The Shattered Thigh and Other Plays. Translated by A.N.D. Haskar. Penguin Books, 1993. pp 98-105.
  • Ramanujan, A.K.  Selections from Poems of Love and War. OUP. 2006
  • Selections of poems from the Bhakti tradition (Andal, Nammalvar, AkkaMahadevi, Raidas, kabir, Lal Ded, ChokhaMela) in Oxford Anthology of Bhakti Literature
  • Begum, Gul-badan. “From Humayun Nama.” (ed.) Women Writing in India: 600
  • Rao, Raja. Kanthapura. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989. Excerpts)
  • Gaddar. “It Will Not Stop.” India in Verse: Contemporary Poetry from 20 Indian Languages, edited by Antara Dev Sen, TLM Books 2011, pp. 305–306.
  • Rahman, Shamsur. The Postcard https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-postcard/
  • Chatterjee, Sarat Chandra. Devdas. Penguin Books. 2002
  • Kundalkar, Sachin. Cobalt Blue: a Novel. Translated by Jerry Pinto, The New Press, 2016.
  • Murugan, Perumal. One Part Woman Translated by Aniruddhan Vasudevan, Penguin Books, 2014.
  • Nasreen, Taslima. Lajja Translated by Kankabati Datta. Prometheus Books, 1997. Hamid, Mohsin. Moth Smoke. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000.
  • Shobasakthi. Traitor. Translated by Anushiya Ramaswamy. Penguin Books, 2010.
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