Landscape as Affective Space in Old Tamil Poetry
Martha Ann Selby, The University of Texas at Austin

In this presentation, I will examine two different methods of reading Old Tamil poetry, composed in the early centuries of the Common Era (often designated as caṅkam poetry, that of the “academy”). I pay particular attention to the ways in which we as readers should feel our ways through the poems, both from within the world of classical literary convention, and from the standpoint of uri, the “emotional content” of any given poem. I...