Critical Discourse in Gujarati

Book excerpt: This volume forms part of the Critical Discourses in South Asia series, which deals with schools, movements, and discursive practices in major South Asian languages. It offers crucial insights into the making of Gujarati literature and its critical tradition across a century / several centuries. The book presents one of a kind historiography of Gujarati literature and of its critical discourse. It brings together English translations of major writings of influential figures dealing with literary criticism and theory, aesthetic and performative traditions, and re-interpretations of primary concepts and categories in Gujarati. It initiates an exploration into Gujarati critical discourse from the heather to neglected pre-colonial centuries and presents key texts in literary and cultural studies, some of which are being made available for the first time into English. These seminal essays explore complex interconnections understand the dynamics of critical discursive situations in Gujarati literature and to carefully construct a mobile post of observation that matches those dynamics. They offer a radical departure from the widespread historiographical practice in Indian writings of disregarding pre-colonial literary critical discourse. The book also offers a new and indigenous periodization of Gujarati literature and its critical discourse, derived from a fresh perception of Gujarati and Indian literary culture. Comprehensive and authoritative, this volume offers an overview of the history of critical thought in Gujrati literature in South Asia. It will be essential for scholars and researchers of Gujarati language and literature, literary criticism, literary theory, comparative literature, Indian literature, cultural studies, art and aesthetics, performance studies, history, sociology, regional studies, and South Asian studies. It will also interest the Gujarati-speaking diaspora and those working on the intellectual history of Gujarat and Western India and conservation of the language and their culture.