Life in a Dead Language

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" Life in a Dead Language "
Matthew Nelson

Document Type	:	AL
Record Number	:	1075786
Doc. No	:	LA119415
Call No	:	‭10.1163/24056480-00204004‬
Language of Document	:	English
Main Entry	:	Matthew Nelson
Title & Author	:	Life in a Dead Language [Article]\ Matthew Nelson
Publication Statement	:	Leiden: Brill
Title of Periodical	:	Journal of World Literature
Date	:	2017
Volume/ Issue Number	:	2/4
Page No	:	411–432
Abstract	:	Literature written in Sanskrit after the onset of British colonialism is sorely neglected. Modern Sanskrit, as it is often called, suffers from the bad image of being written in a dead language. Many of its writers would disagree with that image, but they would know that they are disagreeing. That defensiveness has come to shape their writing, a fact which I argue arises in response to the status of their work as an ultraminor literature, a status which was born with the formation of the “world literature” field and its elevation/absorption of classical Sanskrit at the expense of the latter’s perceived potential for contemporaneity. Literature written in Sanskrit after the onset of British colonialism is sorely neglected. Modern Sanskrit, as it is often called, suffers from the bad image of being written in a dead language. Many of its writers would disagree with that image, but they would know that they are disagreeing. That defensiveness has come to shape their writing, a fact which I argue arises in response to the status of their work as an ultraminor literature, a status which was born with the formation of the “world literature” field and its elevation/absorption of classical Sanskrit at the expense of the latter’s perceived potential for contemporaneity.
Descriptor	:	dead language
Descriptor	:	Modern Sanskrit
Descriptor	:	nostalgia
Descriptor	:	South Asian literature
Descriptor	:	ultraminor literature
Descriptor	:	World Literature
Location & Call number	:	‭10.1163/24056480-00204004‬