| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
In the nineteenth century, Muslim modernist reformers sought to ground an agenda for social and political rejuvenation in a return to the spirit of the early Muslim community. However, the influence of this quest for communal regeneration on theological discourses was, in some cases, less notable than its influence upon projects for cultural and social reform. One area of focus for Indian modernists of the nineteenth century was literature and the literary arts, including poetry, which were now deemed relevant to notions of cultural health, authenticity and decline. Under the dictum that a people's condition is reflected in their language, the themes of moral degeneration and reform came to have a strong bearing on the indigenous valuation of poetry and the literary arts, challenging the criteria upon which such literature was judged. In this paper, I will analyse how the modernist agenda for social reform led to the birth of a new literary romanticism in Urdu poetry.
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