Writing Tamil Catholicism: Literature, Persuasion and Devotion in the Eighteenth Century

  • Post author:
  • Reading time:4 mins read
Writing Tamil Catholicism: Literature, Persuasion and Devotion in the Eighteenth Century | Margherita TrentoWriting Tamil Catholicism: Literature, Persuasion and Devotion in the Eighteenth Century | Margherita Trento

Writing Tamil Catholicism: Literature, Persuasion and Devotion in the Eighteenth Century

Margherita Trento

Philological Encounters Monographs, 3

Brill

April 2022

9789004511613

In Writing Tamil Catholicism: Literature, Persuasion and Devotion in the Eighteenth Century, Margherita Trento explores the process by which the Jesuit missionary Costanzo Giuseppe Beschi (1680-1747), in collaboration with a group of local lay elites identified by their profession as catechists, chose Tamil poetry as the social and political language of Catholicism in eighteenth-century South India.

Trento analyzes a corpus of Tamil grammars and poems, chiefly Beschi’s Tēmpāvaṇi, alongside archival documents to show how, by presenting themselves as poets and intellectuals, Catholic elites gained a persuasive voice as well as entrance into the learned society of the Tamil country and its networks of patronage.

Margherita Trento, PhD (2020), University of Chicago, is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow at the Centre d’Études de l’Inde et de l’Asie du Sud (CNRS/EHESS) in Paris.

Acknowledgments
List of Figures
Abbreviations
Notes to Translation and Transliteration

Introduction: Catholic Literary Practices in Eighteenth-Century South India
 1  Genealogies of Tamil Catholicism
 2  Microstoria and the Global in the Local
 3  The Beginnings of Catholic Literature in Tamil
 4  The Making of an Archive
 5  Chapter Outline and Threads across the Chapters

Part 1 Spiritual Institutions

1 Spiritual Exercises for Tamil Saints
 1  Being a Catechist: Preaching and Literature
 2  Being a Catechist: Caste and Profession
 3  Bringing the Spiritual Exercises to the Mission
 4  Spiritual Retreats between Italy and India
 5  Missionary Strategies and Tamil Locations

2 Tamil Manuals for Catholic Selves
 1  Creating a Catholic Self: The Ñāṉamuyaṟci
 2  Disciplining the Catholic Self: The Vētiyaroḻukkam
 3  The Dangers of a Self in Transition
 4  The Catholic Self and Its Other: The Vētaviḷakkam
 5  Conclusions: Catholic Selves, Dangers and Discipline

Part 2 Rhetorical Education

3 Catholic Poetics and Politics of Space
 1  Jesuit Humanism and Devotion
 2  Kaveri Delta Politics
 3  A Mirror for a Tamil Christian King
 4  The Ēlākkuṟicci School of Rhetoric
 5  Ēlākkuṟicci as a Christian Maṭam

4 A Tamil Grammar of Persuasion
 1  A Textbook of (Christian) Tamil: The Toṉṉūlviḷakkam
 2  Amplificatio as Poruḷ
 3  The Grammar of Society
 4  Ignorant Enemies
 5  Conclusions: Tamil Poetry and the Grammar of Persuasion

Part 3 Catholic Poetry in a Tamil World

5 Writing for Eighteenth-Century Catechists
 1  Christian Epic and Tamil Peruṅkāppiyam
 2  Worldly Publics, Divine Patrons
 3  Angelic Time and the Relocation of Devotion
 4  Tamil Demons and Christian Wonder
 5  Staged Conversions

6 Reading as an Eighteenth-Century Catechist
 1  Paper and Palm-Leaf Trails
 2  Catechist Dynasties
 3  Śaiva Neighbors and Rivals
 4  Towards the Colonial Archive
 5  Conclusions: Catholic Lay Identities in the Longue durée

Conclusions

Bibliography
Index

Leave a Reply