Literary folk : writing popular culture in colonial Punjab 1885-1905

Mahn, Churnjeet; Smith, Andrew and Barton, Anna, eds. (2017) Literary folk : writing popular culture in colonial Punjab 1885-1905. In: Interventions. Manchester University Press, Manchester, pp. 111-128. ISBN 9781784995102

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Abstract

This chapter identifies some of the ways a Punjabi literary sphere was (mis)understood in the late-Victorian empire through the curation of a canon of Punjabi folk-culture by R.C. Temple (1850-1931), Flora Annie Steel (1847-1929) and C.F. Usborne (1874-1919), all of whom lived and worked in Punjab as an extension of colonial administration. Examples of a diverse and rich Punjabi literary cultures were translated into English under the banner of ‘folklore’ which delegitimised the diversity of prose and verse in Punjabi with origins in religious, spiritual and genres of the epic derived from Persian.