Riddles of Belonging : India in Translation and Other Tales of Possession / Christi A. Merrill.
Merrill, Christi A., author.
2009
PK5409 .M47 2009eb
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Title Riddles of Belonging : India in Translation and Other Tales of Possession / Christi A. Merrill.
Author Merrill, Christi A., author.
ISBN 9780823238170
DOI https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823238170
Published New York, NY : Fordham University Press, [2009]
Copyright ©2009
Language English
Language Note In English.
Description 1 online resource (304 p.)
Other Standard Identifiers 10.1515/9780823238170 doi
Call Number PK5409 .M47 2009eb
Dewey Decimal Classification 891.409
Summary Can the subaltern joke? Christi A. Merrill answers by invoking riddling, oral-based fictions from Hindi, Rajasthani, Sanskrit, and Urdu that dare to laugh at what traditions often keep hidden-whether spouse abuse, ethnic violence, or the uncertain legacies of a divinely wrought sex change. Herself a skilled translator, Merrill uses these examples to investigate the expectation that translated work should allow the non-English-speaking subaltern to speak directly to the English-speaking reader. She plays with the trope of speaking to argue against treating a translated text as property, as a singular material object to be "carried across" (as trans-latus implies.) She refigures translation as a performative "telling in turn," from the Hindi word anuvad, to explain how a text might be multiply possessed. She thereby challenges the distinction between "original" and "derivative," fundamental to nationalist and literary discourse, humoring our melancholic fixation on what is lost. Instead, she offers strategies for playing along with the subversive wit found in translated texts. Sly jokes and spirited double entendres, she suggests, require equally spirited double hearings.The playful lessons offered by these narratives provide insight into the networks of transnational relations connecting us across a sea of differences. Generations of multilingual audiences in India have been navigating this "Ocean of the Stream of Stories" since before the 11th century, arriving at a fluid sense of commonality across languages. Salman Rushdie is not the first to pose crucial questions of belonging by telling a version of this narrative: the work of non-English-language writers like Vijay Dan Detha, whose tales are at the core of this book, asks what responsibilities we have to make the rights and wrongs of these fictions come alive "age after age."
Access Note Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics text file PDF
Source of Description Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 03. Jan 2023)
In Fordham University Press Complete eBook-Package Pre-2014
Fordham University Press eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013
Available in Other Form print 9780823229550
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Frontmatter
Contents
Acknowledgments
Can the Subaltern Joke? (to open)
One. Humoring the Melancholic Reader of World Literature
Two. A Telling Example
Three. Framed
Four. A Divided Sense
Five. Passing On
Six. Narration in Ghost Time
A Double Hearing (to close)
Notes
Works Cited
Index

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