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Information about our meetings and seminars
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30 November 2021
The Future of the Classical. Our first meeting will be held online on 30th November, 2021. We shall read extracts from Salvatore Settis鈥� book The Future of the 鈥楥lassical鈥�. One of us will present a response to this text from the perspective of the pre-modern Indian 鈥榗lassical鈥�, and we plan to devote the bulk of our time to a discussion of the material.
28 March 2022
艢akuntal膩. This second session will be dedicated to the drama 艢akuntal膩 and to the history of its modern reception--and canonization as a classic--in Europe and India. Composed in Sanskrit and Prakrit by the poet K膩lid膩sa between the 4th and 5th century CE, and almost instantaneously influential in pre-modern Indian literary tradition, the play 艢akuntal膩 is often quoted as a paradigmatic case of early inclusion of an Asian literary work into the modern Western conceptualization of a 'World's Classics canon鈥�. What does 艢akuntal膩's story of integration into a Western conception of a world canon tell us about the process by which a literary work becomes a classic in this modern sense of the word? And how does this process of literary canonization compare and intersect with the trajectory of the reception of K膩lid膩sa's 艢akuntal膩 in colonial and postcolonial India?
The research project is funded by a grant from the Leverhulme Trust.
