Description: Love may be a universal feeling, but culture and language play a crucial role in defining it. Idioms of love have a long history, and within every society there is always more than one discourse, be it prescriptive, religious, or gender-specific, available at any given time. This book explores the idioms of love that have developed in South Asia, those words, conceptual clusters, images and stories which have interlocked and grown into repertoires. Including essays by literary scholars, historians, anthropologists, film historians and political theorists, the collection unravels the interconnecting strands in the history of the concept (shringara, 'ishq, prem and 'love') and maps their significance in literary, oral and visual traditions. Each essay examines a particular configuration and meaning of love on the basis of genre, tellers and audiences, and the substantial introduction sets out the main repertoires, presenting the student of South Asia with an important cultural history.
Brief description: Francesca Orsini is Lecturer in Hindi at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of The Hindi Public Sphere: 1920-1940. Language and Literature in the Age of Nationalism (2002).
Review Quotes: 'Those interested in demonstrating to students some of the ways in which 'continuous tradition' works - how it seeps generically 'upward' while percolating 'down' and stretching across time - will recognise this volume as an important contribution.' The Journal of Asian Studies