SOAS Research Online

A Free Database of the Latest Research by SOAS Academics and PhD Students

[skip to content]

Orsini, Francesca (2019) 'Present Absence: Book circulation, Indian vernaculars and world literature in the nineteenth century.' Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 22 (3). pp. 310-328.

[img]
Preview
Text - Accepted Version
Download (2MB) | Preview

Abstract

More books from India in Indian languages circulated in Europe in the nineteenth century than now--partly thanks to the efforts of book importers like Trübner & Co. Trübner’s monthly American and Oriental Literary Record (1865-) shows pages and pages of imported Sanskrit books, but also Hindi, Hindustani, Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, Gujarati, Arabic, Persian, and so on. Trübner also imported Peruvian, Argentinian, Brazilian, Yucatanese and other books from Latin America. Yet this impressive circulation and presence of books did not translate into their recognition as world literature. Voluminous compendia like John Macy’s The Story of World Literature (1927) cover “Asian Literature” in merely 13 pages (out of 500), and fail to mention any modern Indian writer apart from Rabindranath Tagore, damning him with faint praise. Why was this material presence and circulation of books in non- European languages in Britain and other parts of Europe matched by their absence as modern literary texts from the imagination of world literature? This essay examines the “technologies of recognition” (Shih) that made modern Indian literatures virtually invisible though materially present in Europe, and the conditions of visibility that occasionally allowed them to be seen.

Item Type: Journal Article
SOAS Departments & Centres: Departments and Subunits > School of Languages, Cultures & Linguistics
ISSN: 1369801X
Copyright Statement: © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies on 20 Sep 2019, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/1369801X.2019.1659169
DOI (Digital Object Identifier): https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2019.1659169
Date Deposited: 04 Feb 2019 10:57
URI: https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/id/eprint/30344
Funders: European Union

Altmetric Data

Statistics

Download activity - last 12 monthsShow export options
Downloads since deposit
6 month trend
249Downloads
6 month trend
305Hits
Accesses by country - last 12 monthsShow export options
Accesses by referrer - last 12 monthsShow export options

Repository staff only

Edit Item Edit Item