It has become apparent in recent research that circulation and recontextualization have been central to the development of early modern North India vernacular culture, despite modern historiographies and their preference for a neat categorization along lines of recent identities and communities. Even if the rhetoric of division and community was a dominant force in the cultural field from the late nineteenth century, this does not mean the practice of exchange and redefinition of cultural forms suddenly came to a halt. With modernity, older literary tropes and forms got new meanings and take on new roles in the expression of identity, across the increasingly sharpening divisions of creed or language. This paper will view the development of modernist writing in Hindi through the lens of recontextualization of key elements of artistic practice from various earlier periods, in which the literary culture of Urdu and Indian Islam were a strong presence. This investigation will specifically look at how the social and artistic concept of authorship in modernist Hindi works before and after Independence builds on both older and contemporary roles and tropes, reflecting the intrinsically hybrid nature of the literary field.

Cette présentation se concerne avec le dévelopment d'un écriture modernist en Hindi en vue de la recontextualization des élements clés de la pratique artistique provenants de diverses périodes antérieures dans lesquelles la culture littéraie de l Óurdou et de l'Islam en Inde avait une forte présence. Cette analyse regarde particulièrement la notion social et artistique de l'auteur dans quelques travaux littéraires modernistes en Hindi d'avant et après l'Indépendence de 1947 qui se fonde sur des tropes et des rôles sociales contemporains, dans laquelle se reflêt la nature hybride du champ littéraire.