Book Details
BACK
|
Title |
KALITTOKAI |
|
Author |
P.Marudanayagam (Complied and Edited by ) |
|
Publisher |
Chennai: Central Institute of Classical Tamil |
|
Publish Year |
2024 |
|
Language |
English |
|
Book ISBN |
978-81-19249-19-0 |
|
Number of Pages |
916 |
|
Book Price |
Rs.1600.00 |
|
About the Book:- |
Among the Classical literary corpus in Tamil, Kalittokai has a unique standing, marked by certain distinctive features that are important to literary and cultural historians as much as to a classical researcher. The verses of this anthology have line lengths ranging from 11 to 75 entitling it to a relatively fuller representation of mutalporul (landscape and time) and karupporu (physical features of the given landscape) with the attendant expansive portrayal of uripporul, the theme of human sexual love. Consequently, Kalittokai is endowed with a massive body of imagery, containing a whole complex of images in each poem, one piled upon another, much larger than most epic similes across the languages. Most of these images are conceived figuratively in the form of similes, mostly tropes rather than rhetorical figures. We must also make a weighty mention of the frequent occurrence of inset similes, ulfurai and iraicci, in kali verses which are surely a sui generis contribution of Classical Tamil to what Ezra Pound calls the 'poetry of indirection'. This character, among others, renders Kalittokai as the 'delight of the learned and as the pride of Classical Tamil creativity. Kalittokai then has an indisputable claim to be considered a supreme achievement of the Classical Tamil mind, besides earning it a significant place among the books of the ancient world. |
