Salle 662, 190 avenue de France 75013 Paris

Conférence donnée dans le cadre des ateliers thématiques "Émotions et mobilisations politiques dans le sous-continent indien" et "L’amour entre norme et transgression : art, histoire, fiction"  

Discussant: Denis Matringe (CEIAS/CNRS, Paris)

The romantic ethos of traditional poetics can be adapted for contemporary political purposes.  Successful adaptation depends on the high value still placed on poetry in Pakistani (and Indian) society.  Also brought into play is the shared emotional history of a population that has imbibed traditional poetics via the oral tradition and which continues to evoke conventional responses to its tropes.  I begin by introducing and explicating a brief background into traditional literary conventions of the Urdu ghazal.  I then take two poems by two popular modern Urdu poets, Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Habib Jalib, and trace how the conventional images and phrases they employ work to engage the emotions necessary for successful political protest.