Noor, Farha: Leisurely Feelings: Emotions and Concepts of Otium in South Asia, Heidelberg: Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing, 2024. https://doi.org/10.11588/hasp.1348
This book traces a conceptual history of literature, leisure and emotions in modern South Asia. Reading colonial capitalism as entwined with the ‘myth of the lazy native’, it focuses on vernacular literary contestations in Urdu and Bengali. It foregrounds otium, leisure and idleness as entangled with emotions and temporalities. The book approaches literary spheres through the lenses of emotions, the self, and the community. Literary discourses of otium are analysed in stylistic innovations, negotiations of colonial modernity and postcolonial uncertainties. Highlighting key literary-conceptual expressions, discussions, and processes, the author explores nostalgia, melancholy, topophilia and haunting as emotions deeply attached to South Asian literary cultures while also resonating with concepts of otium across global modernity.
Farha Noor is a scholar of South Asian literature, culture, and history. She completed her doctoral studies at Heidelberg University, with the support of the DFG-funded project Otium/Muße (University of Freiburg). She currently teaches English at the Rheinland-Pfälzische Technische Universität Kaiserslautern-Landau. Her research interests include history of ideas, concepts, and emotions with a focus on literature and literary cultures
Chapitres
Table des matières
Pages
PDF
Front Matter
i-iv
Dedication
v
Table of Contents
vii-xi
Acknowledgements
xiii-xv
Notes on Transliteration
xvii-xviii
Notes on Translation and Writing Conventions
xix-xx
PART I
1
Introduction
3-37
1 Literature, Otium, and Emotions
Conceptualising Leisurely Feelings in Modern Urdu and Bengali Prose
39-92
PART II
93
2 The Ambivalences of Nostalgia in Late-Nineteenth Century Urdu Literary Sphere
95-153
3 Enchantment, Topophilia, and Idle Leisure
Rabindranath Tagore and Literary Creativity in Modern Bengali Literature
155-203
4 Colonial Melancholy and Post-Partition Nostalgia
Feelings of Dissonance in the Short Fiction of Sa'adat Hasan Manto and Qurratul'ain Hyder
205-258
5 Culture, Intellect, and Emotions
The Romance of Masculinity and Leisure in the Detective Novels of Satyajit Ray
