| ID | 175487 |
| Title Proper | Aesthetics of Isolation |
| Other Title Information | How Pudumaippittan Gave Pre-Eminence to the Tamil Short Story |
| Language | ENG |
| Author | Mani, Preetha |
| Summary / Abstract (Note) | The influential Tamil writer Pudumaippittan turned to the short story to theorise the relationship between literature and society in the late colonial era. He used the genre’s brevity to compress his portrayals of well-known female types—such as widows, prostitutes and goodwives—into singular emotional events. This enabled Pudumaippittan to evoke the wider debates about tradition and modernity that these female types commonly represented without affirming the social reformist positions to which they were linked. Through the short story, Pudumaippittan dislodged his portrayals of the Indian woman from existing gender norms, prompting a shift from social realism to modernist realism within the Tamil literary sphere. |
| `In' analytical Note | South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies Vol. 43, No.5; Oct 2020: p.926-942 |
| Journal Source | South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 2020-10 43, 5 |
| Key Words | Modernism ; Emotion ; Tamil Nationalism ; Short Story ; Novel ; Tamil Literature ; Genre ; Character Type ; Indian Woman ; Social Realism |