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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