TWENTIETH CENT TELUGU POETRY (OIP)

Language: EnglishPages: 346. About the AuthorVelcheru Narayana Rao Krishnadevaraya Professor of Languages and cultures of Asia at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has a Lifelong and intimate connection to contemporary Telugu literary movements. PrefaceEvery time I have written anything about Telugu for a non-Telugu audience I have begun by saying Telugu is the second most widely spoken language in India spoken by about 70 million people in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. I hope this anthology will not need such an explanatory note. Poetry stands in its own right; it does not depend on geographic and demographic support for attention. However poetry is made of words and words are located in language. It is therefore necessary to say that Telugu is a south Indian language with a vocabulary derived from Dravidian as well as Sanskrit sources and it has almost a thousand years of un-interrupted literary tradition. It is a highly musical language and all poetry in it was written in metre until the later half of the twentieth century when free verse became popular. A hundred years is a significant period in the history of any literature even if the literature has been in existence for almost a thousand years before. The last hundred years in Telugu literature have been especially revolutionary since they witnessed events of extraordinary significance in the political and cultural history of Andhra. For one thing Telugu came into powerful contact with English under British colonial rule. Had it not been for the cataclysmic changes that took place in the cultural life of the country the turn of the twentieth century in Telugu literature would have been a less eventful continuation of the new literary modes that began two centuries before. Depending on your p