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Riddles of Belonging : India in Translation and Other Tales of Possession by Christi A Merrill; ProQuest (Firm) is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

What is Riddles of Belonging : India in Translation and Other Tales of Possession about?

Can the subaltern joke? Christi A. Merrill answers by invoking riddling, oral-based fictions from Hindi, Rajasthani, Sanskrit, and Urdu that dare to laugh at what traditions often keep hidden-whether spouse abuse, ethnic violence, or the uncertain legacies of a divinely wrought sex change. Herself a skilled translator, Merrill uses these examples to investigate the expectation that translated work should allow the non-English-speaking subaltern to speak directly to the English-speaking reader. She plays with the trope of speaking to argue against treating a translated text as property, as a singular material object to be "carried across" (as trans-latus implies.) She refigures translation as a performative "telling in turn," from the Hindi word anuvad, to explain how a text might be multiply possessed. She thereby challenges the distinction between "original" and "derivative," fundamental to nationalist and literary discourse, humoring our melancholic fixation on what is lost. Instead, she offers strategies for playing along with the subversive wit found in translated texts. Sly jokes and spirited double entendres, she suggests, require equally spirited double hearings. The playful

Who reads Riddles of Belonging : India in Translation and Other Tales of Possession?

Author

Christi A Merrill; ProQuest (Firm)

Publisher

Fordham University Press

Published

2008

Language

EN

ISBN

9780823238170

Category

nonfiction

Subjects

Language Learning, Poetry, History