Farha Noor
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Modern South Asian Languages and Literatures, SAI, University of Heidelberg / English Department, University of Freiburg PhD student (05/2017-06/2022) in sub-project G4 |
Dissertation project
Emotional Manifestations of Otium in Modern Bangla and Urdu Prose
This dissertation aimed to read various concepts of otiosity and leisure in Modern Indian literary representations, restricting these to Bangla and Urdu prose. Locating shifting attitudes to time as central to the experience of otiosity, the dissertation aimed to understand these experiences through the affective reading of literature on the one hand and tracing the entangled perceptions of time as a result of the rich exchanges between India and Europe on the other hand. In doing so, the dissertation also aimed to understand the emotional association of temporal-spatial concepts like Nostalgia and Melancholia by these two significant literary oeuvres, following the nationalization and regionalization of language in Modern India. Through this study, the project hoped to draw out the essence of how time is felt through the shifts of the 20th century in the troubled linguistic landscape of the Indian subcontinent as represented in works of significant literary figures.