Project Details
Projekt
Leisure in Indian contemporary novels (G04 (C03))
Subject Area
European and American Literary and Cultural Studies
Term
from 2013 to 2020
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 197396619
In this project, the theme of leisure will be documented and analysed in Indian novels written in English and one of the North Indian regional languages in the period between 1990 and 2016. Novels like Pankaj Mishras The Romantics, Nayantara Sahgal’s A Time to be Happy, Sunetra Gupta’s A Sin of Colour and Anita Desai’s The Artist of Disappearance depict leisure in nostalgic and anti-colonial ways. They do this by arguing that there exists a genuinely Indian leisure which radically differs from the Western dichotomy of work and idleness and which correlates with moments of reflection, the appreciation of landscape and of art. Comparing English-language novels displaying this theme and comparing them with representations of leisure in novels in the regional languages will elucidate whether the motif is linked to an indigenous Indian tradition or needs to be interpreted as an autostereotypical reinterpretation of a colonial heterostereotype.
DFG Programme
Collaborative Research Centres
Applicant Institution
Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
Project Heads
Professorin Dr. Monika Fludernik; Professorin Dr. Miriam Nandi, until 12/2016
