General introductions to premodern Telugu literature come in chapters 1 (“Multiple Literary Cultures in Telugu: Court, Temple, and Public”) and 4 (“Coconut and Honey: Sanskrit and Telugu in Medieval Andhra”). At the same time, he aims to oppose reductive analyses, holding literature to be fundamentally multivocal-susceptible to a variety of interpretations, possessing lives and afterlives, and thus distinct from and “unfettered by … overpowering authorial sermon” (p. This broad thematic and chronological compass is cut by VNR's attentiveness to the social and ideological dimensions of the texts. Among them are the fifteen pieces collected in Text and Tradition in South India.Ĭovering over 900 years of South Indian literary traditions, the essays’ stand-out themes include “concepts of author, text, and the historicity of text cultures,” as well as “orality and literacy” and “the quiet impact of colonial modernity on Indian text practices” (p. ![]() What's more, in over thirty years he has produced a crop of insightful essays that bring the substantial body of Telugu traditions to bear on the broad questions of South Asian and literary studies. His works, composed singly and with a stable of collaborators, now form the small library of monographs and translations that practically constitutes the field's literature. Velcheru Narayana Rao (or VNR, as he is known) is the preeminent scholar of Telugu studies in the American academy.
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