The Urdu Ghazal

Description

The Urdu Ghazal presents the unique flowering of the ghazal as a by-product of India’s composite culture.

It explores a variety of influences on the ghazal, including Sufism, Bhakti movement, and infusion of Rekhta and Persian languages and culture. The book elucidates classical ghazal forms that blossomed from the seeds sown by Amir Khusrau in the fourteenth century to achieve great heights of literary excellence during the next 300 years, notably in the works of great poets like Mir and Ghalib. It also illustrates different socio-political and cultural demands of changing times, primarily how the ghazal provided new creative models to deal with literary movements like progressivism, modernism, and postmodernism, through works of pioneering twentieth-century poets like Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Gulzar, and Javed Akhtar.

About the Author

Gopi Chand Narang is professor emeritus at the University of Delhi and Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India. He is also former president of Sahitya Akademi, and has been awarded several national and international honours for his outstanding contribution to Urdu scholarship.

About the Translator

Surinder Deol is the author of Sahir: A Literary Portrait (2019). He has translated Gopi Chand Narang’s seminal study of Ghalib, which was published as Ghalib: Innovative Meanings and the Ingenious Mind (2017). His translation of Divan-e Ghalib was published as The Treasure: A Modern Rendition of Ghalib’s Lyrical Love Poetry in 2014.

Reviews

The Urdu Ghazal beautifully elucidates how ghazal became such an enthralling poetic diction.

—SHAFEY KIDWAI, Professor, Aligarh Muslim University

Table of contents

Preface

Part I: The Cultural Landscape

1. The Genesis and Evolution of India’s Composite Culture

Part II: Urdu Ghazal: The Classical Foundation

2. The Concept of Love
3. The Concept of Beauty
4. The Concept of Self
5. The Rhetorical Aspects of the Urdu Ghazal: Metaphors, Similes, Symbols, and Imagery

Part III: The Twentieth-Century Panorama

6. The Neoclassicists
7. The Progressives
8. The Modernists and the Postmodernists

Epilogue

Bibliography

Index

About the Author and Translator