The Novelist as Critic: The Disparaging Versions of Urdu Poets in Early Urdu Novels
Mohammed Afzal
DOI https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.13292408
Abstract: This paper aims to show that the negative portrayals of the Urdu poets that figured in early Urdu novels was a manifestation of the rivalry that developed between the genres of poetry and novel in the second half of the nineteenth-century. By analysing Nażīr Aḥmad’s novels Taubat-al Naṣūh (The Repentance of Naṣūh, 1874), Fasāna-e Mubtalā (The tale of Mubtala, 1885), and Mirzā Hādi Rusvā’s Sharīf Zāda (The gentleman,1900), the paper seeks to demonstrate that the depictions of poets as profligate, degenerate, foppish, narcissistic, effeminate, sycophant, and idle are revelatory of the strategy adopted by the novelists to undermine the cultural appeal of poetry. This paper shows how the novelists deployed various fictional devices as powerful tools of literary evaluations. The novelists’ assumption of the authority of literary critic accorded a weight to their opinion, helping them exercise censorship on classical Urdu poetry. The didactic design of the reformist novel readily accommodated the prolonged discussions of literary matters. The fluidity of literary genres in the late nineteenth-century caused by the proliferation of lithographic press in South Asia allowed novels to incorporate the elements of literary criticism. This paper also highlights the significance and inseparability of the early Urdu novel in the history of Urdu literary criticism in late nineteenth-century India. This research paper seeks to demonstrate that the marginalisation of poetry was not only linked with the emergence of novel as a new genre but also inextricably related to the cultural imperialism of the British administration in India.
Keywords: Early Urdu Novel, Urdu Poets, Urdu Literary Criticism, Nażīr Aḥmad, Mirzā Hādi Rusvā, Nineteenth-century literature.
Works Cited
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Dr. Mohammed Afzal is Assistant Professor of English at Jamia Millia Islamia, India. He holds a PhD degree from the Department of English, University of Delhi. He has contributed chapters to Sultana’s Sisters (Routledge, 2022), The Silence that Speaks (OUP, 2022) and Medical Maladies (Niyogi, 2022). His research articles have appeared in Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi), Journal of the School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, and Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics. His review of Vikas Prakash Joshi’s My Name is Cinnamon (2022) has been selected for publication in the forthcoming issue of Indian Literature, IL342. He has also made academic presentations in international and national conferences at University of Wisconsin, University of Chicago, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of Delhi, and Aligarh Muslim University, India.
https://orcid.org/0009-0004-8881-9543
afzal.academicmatters@gmail.com
The Novelist as Critic: The Disparaging Versions of Urdu Poets in Early Urdu Novels by Mohammed Afzal is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 
