OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
If staff have any questions about the Oxford Events launch, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
The talk will scrutinise theories on the emergence of a vernacular literary tradition in the “Hindi Belt” (Madhyadeśa) and examine the earliest extant works coming from the region. While both Hindi and Urdu have produced literary histories that extend for a millennium or more, most early claims are untenable in the light of later philological research. The talk will examine the role of Jain stories and of a primarily Jain literary idiom rooted in Apabhramsha and originating in Gujarat in setting examples for later works. It will also discuss the gendered aspect of vernacularisation and investigate alternatives to binaries, such as centre and periphery or cosmopolitan and vernacular.
