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Orient Blackswan Pvt. Ltd. Selections From Galpaguchchha Vol 3 by DEVY,G.N.
After Amnesia is an original analysis of literary criticism in India. It is an attempt to describe what is recognised by common agreement to be a crisis in Indian criticism, and to explain it in historical terms. Dr Devy argues that the colonial experience in India gave rise to false images of the West as a superior culture; and induced a state of ‘cultural amnesia’ and mistaken modes of literary criticism. It is this amnesia that is responsible for the belief among literary historians that the critical tradition in the modern Indian languages—for instance, Gujarati and Marathi—is only over a hundred years old. The author argues that it is inconceivable for these languages to have produced great literatures for half a millennium without developing some form of literary criticism. Therefore, he says, it is necessary to postulate a more reliable literary history.