عنوان

Life in a Dead Language

LA119415

انگلیسی

Life in a Dead Language

[Article]

Matthew Nelson

Leiden

Brill

Literature written in Sanskrit after the onset of British colonialism is sorely neglected. Modern Sanskrit, as it is often called, suffers from the bad image of being written in a dead language. Many of its writers would disagree with that image, but they would know that they are disagreeing. That defensiveness has come to shape their writing, a fact which I argue arises in response to the status of their work as an ultraminor literature, a status which was born with the formation of the "world literature" field and its elevation/absorption of classical Sanskrit at the expense of the latter's perceived potential for contemporaneity. Literature written in Sanskrit after the onset of British colonialism is sorely neglected. Modern Sanskrit, as it is often called, suffers from the bad image of being written in a dead language. Many of its writers would disagree with that image, but they would know that they are disagreeing. That defensiveness has come to shape their writing, a fact which I argue arises in response to the status of their work as an ultraminor literature, a status which was born with the formation of the "world literature" field and its elevation/absorption of classical Sanskrit at the expense of the latter's perceived potential for contemporaneity.

2017

411-432

Journal of World Literature

2/4

2405-6480

dead language

Modern Sanskrit

nostalgia

South Asian literature

ultraminor literature

World Literature

Matthew Nelson

10.1163/24056480-00204004

p

[Article]

275578

a

Y