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- Title
Birth of the Tragedy in Tamil: Colonial Compulsions and Cultural Negotiations.
- Authors
Muruganandan, K.
- Abstract
This paper attempts to map out the trajectory of tragedy as a genre in Tamil drama. Though tragic elements are abundant in Tamil literary works both of classical as well as folk nature, stories or plays that could be called 'tragedy' in the western sense of the term were almost non-extinct till the 1890s in Tamil. This was the case with other Indian languages too, as the Asian theatre traditions were mostly characterised by stylisation in contrast to realism of the west. With the advent of colonial modernity and cultural renaissance modelled upon the western ethos, Tamil, along with other Indian languages, had to relieve itself from the humbling embarrassment of not having tragedy as a genre in its literary and performance corpus. Emergence of tragedy in Tamil drama, both in performance as well as in textual form, followed after this realisation by the urban elite intelligentsia during the late nineteenth century. With their social status and cultural position coupled with colonial education, this urban elite intelligentsia was at the forefront of the Tamil cultural and literary renaissance, and theatre enthusiasts among them played a crucial role in the emergence of play texts and performances in the Tamil language within the genre of tragedy. Sambanda Mudaliar, Suryanarayana Sastri, Srinivasa Aiyanger, Shankaradas Swamigal and a host of others played different yet simultaneous parts in this process approximately from 1890 to 1920. The birth of tragedy in effect relegated the already available and much popular native folk performances, and instead went on to instil the primacy of text over performance in Tamil drama. This genre was received, rejected and renegotiated by the Tamil audience and theatre artists (both amateur and professionals) at various levels and for different reasons of their respective cultural contexts. This paper will locate these processes, and this discussion might prove fruitful for furthering the understanding of Tamil drama and its confrontations with colonial modernity.
- Subjects
TAMIL drama; INDIGENOUS languages of the Americas; TAMIL literature; SOCIAL status; NATIVE American drama
- Publication
Language in India, 2019, Vol 19, Issue 6, p203
- ISSN
1930-2940
- Publication type
Article