Abstract

The influential Tamil writer Pudumaippittan turned to the short story to theorise the relationship between literature and society in the late colonial era. He used the genre’s brevity to compress his portrayals of well-known female types—such as widows, prostitutes and goodwives—into singular emotional events. This enabled Pudumaippittan to evoke the wider debates about tradition and modernity that these female types commonly represented without affirming the social reformist positions to which they were linked. Through the short story, Pudumaippittan dislodged his portrayals of the Indian woman from existing gender norms, prompting a shift from social realism to modernist realism within the Tamil literary sphere.

摘要

有影响力的泰米尔作家Pudumaippittan转向了短篇小说，以对殖民时代后期文学与社会之间的关系进行理论化。他利用流派的简洁将自己对著名女性类型（如寡妇，妓女和好妻子）的描述压缩为单一的情感事件。这使Pudumaippittan引起了关于这些女性类型通常代表的传统和现代性的更广泛的辩论，而没有肯定她们所联系的社会改良主义者的立场。通过短篇小说，Pudumaippittan从现有的性别规范取代了对印度女人的刻画，促使泰米尔文学领域从社会现实主义转向现代主义现实主义。