Interpreting Homes in South Asian Literature

Download or read book Interpreting Homes in South Asian Literature written by Malashri Lal and published by Pearson Education India. This book was released on with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The search for the location in which the self is ‘at home’ has been one of the primary projects of modern literature all over the world. Interpreting Homes: South Asian Literature attempts to map the narratives of the 'home' in South Asian literature from the advance of modernity on the subcontinent till the present day. It aims to read more than the domestic into representations of the home, to explore not only the geographical, but also the psychological and material connotations of 'home'. Its goal is to disassemble the concept of 'home' in all its incarnations as confinement, as stability, as security, as myth and as desire. The book problematises ‘home’ and its experience in different contexts. It investigates if and how home changes its significations when articulated from different locations, in different languages and by different subjects, paying particular attention to ideological determinants like gender and class. The editors of the anthology have encouraged contributors to also address diaspora writing and to achieve the widest possible comparative perspective. Though the focus has been kept on literature, some papers deal with cultural narratives of home in oral and folk mediums. The collection comprises of an Introduction and 18 original essays divided into six thematic sections.