Abstract
The paper attempts to understand the idea of readership and access to printed books in colonial South India, responding to print and missionary interventions in nineteenth-century Kerala. The paper would ask, how does one work with traces of reading in the text and construct its beyond with interest in this history, paying heed to its entanglements in desires and fears of and from the same activity of reading? Is there a potential affective space in this history, accounted by the reader between divisions of the material text and the liminalities of reading events scattered in its time and space? The paper envisions methods to study reading and its lives by imaginatively and symbolically locating “readers” and “respondents” to the changes within the nineteenth-century missionary printing exercise. The study understands the coming of Vidyasamgraham or The Cottayam College Quarterly Magazine, published between 1864 and 1867 to have set the pace for both knowledge dissemination and the making of rational modern “reading” subjects in nineteenth-century Kerala. The serialization of The Slayer Slain throughout its eight issues will be read alongside the selected entries of Vidyasamgraham to ask questions about how reading was conceived, its locations, and the nature of the book.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.