Translating tragedy into Kannada
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V.B. Tharakeshwar
Abstract
Despite an apparently rich literary heritage in nineteenth-century India, Indians and English Orientalists were bewildered that literary cultures in the ‘Indian’ context lacked what they perceived as the culmination of aesthetic complexity, the tragic form. Although the explanations they came up with might fall short of a convincing answer, the debate and the consequent translation of Greek tragedies into Indian languages so as to address this lack offer a fertile ground for investigating the issues of politics of genre and the question of colonialism and nationalism. This paper argues that translations of Greek tragedies into Kannada, the official language of Karnataka, reflected the colonial subject’s negotiation with white literary supremacy.
Abstract
Despite an apparently rich literary heritage in nineteenth-century India, Indians and English Orientalists were bewildered that literary cultures in the ‘Indian’ context lacked what they perceived as the culmination of aesthetic complexity, the tragic form. Although the explanations they came up with might fall short of a convincing answer, the debate and the consequent translation of Greek tragedies into Indian languages so as to address this lack offer a fertile ground for investigating the issues of politics of genre and the question of colonialism and nationalism. This paper argues that translations of Greek tragedies into Kannada, the official language of Karnataka, reflected the colonial subject’s negotiation with white literary supremacy.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- Foreword ix
- Introduction 1
- Caste in and Recasting language 17
- Translation as resistance 29
- Tellings and renderings in medieval Karnataka 43
- Translating tragedy into Kannada 57
- The afterlives of panditry 75
- Beyond textual acts of translation 95
- Reading Gandhi in two tongues 107
- Being-in-translation 119
- (Mis)Representation of sufism through translation 133
- Translating Indian poetry in the Colonial Period in Korea 145
- A. K. Ramanujan 161
- An etymological exploration of ‘translation’ in Japan 175
- Translating against the grain 195
- Index 213
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- Foreword ix
- Introduction 1
- Caste in and Recasting language 17
- Translation as resistance 29
- Tellings and renderings in medieval Karnataka 43
- Translating tragedy into Kannada 57
- The afterlives of panditry 75
- Beyond textual acts of translation 95
- Reading Gandhi in two tongues 107
- Being-in-translation 119
- (Mis)Representation of sufism through translation 133
- Translating Indian poetry in the Colonial Period in Korea 145
- A. K. Ramanujan 161
- An etymological exploration of ‘translation’ in Japan 175
- Translating against the grain 195
- Index 213
