Women Writing in India: 600 B.C. to the early twentieth century

Front Cover
Susie J. Tharu, Ke Lalita
Feminist Press at CUNY, 1991 - 576 pages
These ground-breaking collections offer 200 texts from eleven languages, never before available in English or as a collection, along with a new reading of cultural history that draws on contemporary scholarship on women and India. This extraordinary body of literature and important documentary resource illuminates the lives of Indian women through 2,600 years of change and extends the historical understanding of literature, feminism, and the making of modern India. The biographical, critical, and bibliographical headnotes in both volumes, supported by an introduction which Anita Desai describes as "intellectually rigorous, challenging, and analytical," place the writers and their selections within the context of Indian culture and history.

Volume I: 600 B.C. to the Early Twentieth Century includes songs by Buddhist nuns, testimonies of medieval rebel poets and court historians, and the voices of more than sixty other writers of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries. Among the diverse selections are a rare early essay by an untouchable woman; an account by the first feminist historian; and a selection from the first novel written in English by an Indian woman.
 

Contents

VI
65
VII
68
VIII
69
IX
70
X
73
XII
74
XIII
75
XVI
76
CXXIV
262
CXXV
263
CXXVI
275
CXXVII
277
CXXVIII
281
CXXX
283
CXXXI
284
CXXXIII
286

XVII
77
XXI
79
XXIII
80
XXV
81
XXVI
82
XXVII
83
XXIX
84
XXX
85
XXXI
86
XXXII
87
XXXIII
88
XXXIV
89
XXXV
90
XXXVII
92
XXXIX
93
XLI
94
XLII
96
XLIV
97
XLVII
98
XLVIII
99
XLIX
100
L
102
LI
105
LII
106
LIII
107
LIV
109
LV
112
LVI
113
LVIII
114
LXII
115
LXIII
116
LXVI
118
LXVII
119
LXVIII
120
LXX
122
LXXII
125
LXXIII
126
LXXIV
127
LXXV
128
LXXVI
129
LXXVII
130
LXXVIII
131
LXXIX
133
LXXXI
134
LXXXII
135
LXXXIV
136
LXXXVI
137
LXXXVIII
138
XC
139
XCI
140
XCII
141
XCIII
142
XCIV
143
XCV
187
XCVI
188
XCVIII
189
XCIX
190
C
192
CI
193
CII
194
CIII
199
CIV
203
CV
205
CVI
208
CVII
211
CVIII
213
CIX
214
CX
215
CXI
216
CXII
219
CXIII
221
CXIV
223
CXV
235
CXVI
239
CXVII
241
CXVIII
243
CXX
247
CXXI
253
CXXII
256
CXXIII
258
CXXXIV
290
CXXXV
292
CXXXVII
296
CXXXVIII
299
CXXXIX
309
CXL
311
CXLII
315
CXLIII
318
CXLIV
319
CXLV
323
CXLVI
325
CXLVII
329
CXLIX
331
CL
332
CLII
333
CLIV
334
CLV
335
CLVI
340
CLVII
342
CLVIII
352
CLIX
353
CLX
354
CLXI
356
CLXII
357
CLXIII
358
CLXV
363
CLXVII
366
CLXVIII
370
CLXIX
372
CLXX
378
CLXXI
379
CLXXII
380
CLXXIII
381
CLXXIV
384
CLXXV
385
CLXXVII
386
CLXXVIII
388
CLXXIX
391
CLXXXI
392
CLXXXII
394
CLXXXIII
395
CLXXXIV
400
CLXXXV
401
CLXXXVI
402
CLXXXVII
403
CLXXXVIII
409
CXC
410
CXCI
419
CXCII
421
CXCIII
424
CXCIV
426
CXCV
428
CXCVI
430
CXCVIII
433
CXCIX
437
CCI
438
CCII
444
CCIII
446
CCIV
451
CCVI
452
CCVII
459
CCVIII
461
CCIX
470
CCX
471
CCXI
472
CCXII
473
CCXIII
476
CCXIV
478
CCXV
487
CCXVI
490
CCXVII
501
CCXVIII
502
CCXIX
506
CCXX
507
CCXXI
513
CCXXIV
522
CCXXV
530
CCXXVI
533
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Page 24 - Britain ; to that literature the brightest, the purest, the most durable of all the glories of our country ; to that literature so rich in precious truth and precious fiction ; to that literature which boasts of the prince of all poets and of the prince of all philosophers ; to that literature which has exercised an influence wider than that of our commerce, and mightier than that of our arms...
Page 17 - Thus each generation of women writers has found itself, in a sense, without a history, forced to rediscover the past anew, forging again and again the consciousness of their sex.
Page 15 - Books by women are treated as though they themselves were women, and criticism embarks, at its happiest, upon an intellectual measuring of busts and hips.
Page 19 - Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979). Margaret Homans, Bearing the Word: Language and Female Experience in Nineteenth-Century Women's Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). Nancy Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction. (Ferris notes the 'gap' constituted by Scott in Armstrong's account: see p.

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