OUTSIDE THE LETTERED CITY EPZ P

Book Details:

• Author: Manishita Dass

• Publisher: OUP US

• Binding: Paperback

• Release Date: 30-04-2017

• ISBN: 9780190859190

• Language: English

• Pages: 248

• Cover: Paperback

• Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches

About The Book:

Outside the Lettered City offers a compelling examination of how middle-class Indians responded to the rise of cinema as a popular mass entertainment form in early 20th century India. By focusing on the cinema’s influence as a public sphere and a mass medium of modernity, the book explores the complex relationship between the burgeoning film culture and the wider social, cultural, and political fabric of Indian society.

Drawing on extensive archival research, this work unveils the aspirations and anxieties surrounding the new medium. Cinema presented tantalizing possibilities for nationalist mobilization but also posed challenges to the cultural authority of India’s elite classes. Through case studies from Bombay and Kolkata, the book explores how discourses surrounding cinema intertwined with discourses about a national public. These discourses brought about both excitement about cinema's potential to democratize the public sphere and deepening fears about cultural degeneration.

In these early 20th-century discourses on cinema, Outside the Lettered City uncovers traces of a formative tension within Indian public culture. This tension is characterized by competing visions of a deliberative, enlightened public versus concerns about the unruly masses. Through its historical analysis, this book provides critical insights into the intersection of cinema, culture, and politics in colonial and early postcolonial India.