Uss Ko Ikk Shakhs Samajhna Tou Munasib Hi Nahin: Meeraji Ki Nazm Aur Nasr Kay Mutaliat

Description

Winner of the 8th UBL Literary Awards 2019 for the Best Urdu Non-Fiction

Meeraji (1912-1949) is an acclaimed modernist Urdu poet, critic, and translator. He not only laid the foundations of modernist poetry in Urdu by writing poems, making a break from his predecessors with his distinctively innovative and experimental form and content, but took upon himself to elaborate fervidly the poetics of modernist Urdu verse by analysing and interpreting poems. He pioneered the methods, ways and conventions of how to read a modern poem. Adopting a cosmopolitan, transnational view in translation, he proffered an alternate to the colonial narrative of translation, which mostly centred on English language texts. His poetic style also mirrors the transnational ethos.

Meeraji’s poetry, criticism and translations have not only been applauded by critics but are now taught in Bachelor’s and Master’s courses of Urdu literature in Pakistan and India.

The author of this study seeks to locate the position occupied by Meeraji’s imaginative and intellectual works in both colonial and postcolonial settings.

Author Biography

The author, Nasir Abbas Nayyar, was born in Jhang in1965. He is a Professor of Urdu at the Punjab University Oriental College, Lahore. He holds a PhD in Urdu Literature from the Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, and a post-Doctoral Degree from the University of Heidelberg. He is a highly respected critic and has a sound background
of history and sociology, both necessary to his literary criticism output. His two books Ma Baad e Nau Abadiyat: Urdu Kay Tanazur Main and Urdu Adab Ki Tashkeel e Jadeed were also published by Oxford University Press Pakistan in 2013 and 2016 respectively.