Nets of Awareness

Frances Pritchett's study unites literary criticism with history to explain how Urdu poetry - long the pride of Indo-Muslim culture - became devalued in the second half of the 19th century. Pritchett argues that this abrupt shift was part of the backlash following the violent Indian Mutiny of 1857. She uses the lives and writings of the distinguished poets and critics Azad and Hali to show the disastrous consequences - culturally and politically - of British rule. The British had silence, urban planning - and Wordsworth. Azad and Hali had a discredited culture and a metaphysical, sexually-ambiguous poetry that differed radically from English lyric forms.