The Sawyer Seminar series announces that the first of a two-part inaugural event will be a guest lecture by Rajeswari Sunder Rajan (NYU).
Talk Title: "Zeitgeist and the Literary Text: India, 1947, in Qurratulain Hyder’s My Temples, Too, and Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children"
Abstract: I pursue in this essay the modalities of the literary recovery and representation of a landmark period in the Indian sub-continent, the times ‘around 1947.’ To this end I examine two literary texts, Qurratulain Hyder’s My Temples, Too (1948) and Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981) that, in common with a great many other literary works in the Indian sub-continent, have a shared point of reference in a date and a place (places) that they make central to their narratives: August 15, 1947, Independence Day in India (and Pakistan). Their convergence around this time-place is marked by a singular, defining ‘spirit of the times.’ Juxtaposing My Temples, Too, Hyder’s first novel, with Midnight’s Children, Rushdie’s (also early) novel permits us to perceive some of the multiple ways in which literature, the novel specifically, represents and shapes history, not only as narrative but also in terms of what we might call the zeitgeist. Although the literary products/ expressions of the zeitgeist might be variable—and the two texts in question are chosen precisely for the more obvious differences of genre, period, language, gender of their authors between them—a certain ‘spirit’ of 1947 was pervasive, indeed inescapable, in the political as well as cultural consciousness of the time in the sub-continent.
The entire OSU community is invited. The talk will be followed by a reception.
Visit sawyer.osu.edu for more information and a complete schedule of events.
This event is sponsored by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a Sawyer Seminar in the Comparative Study of Cultures.
