The life of a text : performing the Ramcaritmanas of Tulsidas
by Philip Lutgendorf
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Description
The Life of a Text offers a vivid portrait of one community's interaction with its favorite text-the epic Ramcaritmanas-and the way in which performances of the epic function as a flexible and evolving medium for cultural expression. Anthropologists, historians of religion, and readers interested in the culture of North India and the performance arts will find breadth of subject, careful scholarship, and engaging presentation in this unique and beautifully illustrated examination of Hindi show more culture. The most popular and influential text of Hindi-speaking North India, the epic Ramcaritmanas is a sixteenth century retelling of the Ramayana story by the poet Tulsidas. This masterpiece of pre-modern Hindi literature has always reached its largely illiterate audiences primarily through oral performance including ceremonial recitation, folksinging, oral exegesis, and theatrical representation. Drawing on fieldwork in Banaras, Lutgendorf breaks new ground by capturing the range of performance techniques in vivid detail and tracing the impact of the epic in its contemporary cultural context. show lessTags
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Author Information
2+ Works 34 Members
Philip Lutgendorf is Professor of Hindi and Modern Indian Studies at the University of Iowa
Awards and Honors
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, Literature Studies and Criticism
- DDC/MDS
- 891.4312 — Literature & rhetoric Literatures of other languages East Indo-European and Celtic literatures Modern Indic languages Hindi, Urdu Hindi poetry 1345–1645
- LCC
- PK1947.9 .T83 .R33326 — Language and Literature Indo-Iranian languages and literatures Indo-Iranian philology and literature Indo-Aryan languages Modern Indo-Aryan languages Particular languages and dialects Hindi, Urdu, Hindustani languages and Hindi language
- BISAC
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- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 5
