Anshu Malhotra is Associate Professor of History at the University of Delhi and the author of
Siobhan Lambert-Hurley is Reader in International History at the University of Sheffield and author of
Anshu Malhotra is Associate Professor of History at the University of Delhi and the author of
Siobhan Lambert-Hurley is Reader in International History at the University of Sheffield and author of
Tawa’if as Poet and Patron: Rethinking Women’s Self-Representation
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Published:October 2015
Shweta Sachdeva Jha, 2015. "Tawa’if as Poet and Patron: Rethinking Women’s Self-Representation", Speaking of the Self: Gender, Performance, and Autobiography in South Asia, Anshu Malhotra, Siobhan Lambert-Hurley
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This chapter addresses the issue of women and self-representation through the life of a wealthy courtesan and tawa’if poet, Mah Laqa Bai “Chanda” (c. 1767–c. 1824) in the court of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Hyderabad. Through her life history, the chapter analyzes the reemployment of “conventional” acts of imperial image making such as composition of poetry, public display of faith, and patronage of architecture and writers by royal women as a means of self-articulation. It will be shown how reading and writing poetry become significant acts of authorship and autobiographical articulation in the specific context of performance, modernity, and mobility in emerging princely cultures.
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