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In the Shade of the Golden Palace explores the work of the prolific Bengali poet Alaol (fl. 1651-71), who translated five narrative poems and one versified treatise from medieval Hindi and Persian into Bengali. This book is a unique guide for readers of Middle Bengali poetry, a detailed study of the cultural history of the frontier region of Arakan, and an original contribution to the poetics of South Asian literatures.
List of contents
- Acknowledgements
- Map of Arakan and eastern South Asia in the seventeenth century
- Introduction: Poetics in the margins
- Chapter 1: The formation of Bengali literature in Arakan (ca. 1430-1638)
- Chapter 2: Literary urbanity in Mrauk U
- Chapter 3: New beginnings: ¿l¿ol's early career in Mrauk U
- Chapter 4 ¿l¿ol's poetry and Mrauk U's political turmoil
- Chapter 5: ¿l¿ol's poetics: when locality rhymes with originality
- Chapter 6: Indo-Afghan historical imaginaries and the romance genre
- Chapter 7: Lyric poetry and desi aesthetics in eastern South Asia
- Conclusion: Middle Bengali poetics and the multilingual literary history of Bengal
- Bibliography
- Appendix 1: Summaries of ¿l¿ol's Padmavati and the story of the goldsmith's wife
- a. Summary of ¿l¿ol's Padmavati
- b. The story of the goldsmith's wife in Sayphulmuluk Badiujjamal
- Appendix 2: Analytical tables of ¿l¿ol's songs
- Appendix 3: Original texts of the Middle Bengali and Old Maithili songs
- Appendix 4: A Persian appraisal of ¿l¿ol's life and works
- Index
About the author
Thibaut d'Hubert is an assistant professor of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago.
Summary
In the Shade of the Golden Palace explores the work of the prolific Bengali poet Ālāol (fl. 1651-71), who translated five narrative poems and one versified treatise from medieval Hindi and Persian into Bengali. The book maps the genres, structures, and themes of Ālāol's works, paying special attention to his discourse on poetics and his literary genealogy, which included Sanskrit, Avadhi, Maithili, Persian, and Bengali authors. D'Hubert focuses on courtly speech in Ālāol's poetry, his revisiting of classical categories in a vernacular context, and the prominent role of performing arts in his conceptualization of the poetics of the written word. The foregrounding of this audacious theory of meaning in Ālāol's poetry is a crucial contribution of the book, both in terms of general conceptual analysis and for its significance in the history of Bengali poetry.
This book shows how multilingual literacy fostered a variety of literary experiments in the remote kingdom of Arakan, which lay between present-day southeastern Bangladesh and Myanmar, in the mid-17th century. D'Hubert also presents a detailed analysis of Middle Bengali narrative poems, as well as translations of Old Maithili, Brajabuli, and Middle Bengali lyric poems that illustrate the major poetic styles in the regional courts of eastern South Asia. In the Shade of the Golden Palace therefore fulfills three functions: it is a unique guide for readers of Middle Bengali poetry, a detailed study of the cultural history of the frontier region of Arakan, and an original contribution to the poetics of South Asian literatures.
Additional text
Thibaut d'Hubert successfully expands the traditional academic paradigms of approaching Middle Bengali literature by attempting to critically construct the seventeenth century Arakanese poet-laureate ?l?ol's poetics through an intricate philological interpretation of his stylistically complex and contextually pervasive body of works.
