• ISBN13: 9788196580315
• Binding: Hardcover
• Subject: N/A
• Publisher: Tulika Books
• Publisher Imprint: Tulika Books
• Publication Date: March 25, 2025
• Pages: 196
• Original Price: INR 950.0
• Language: English
• Edition: N/A
• Item Weight: 788 grams
• BISAC Subject(s): Comparative Literature and Asia / South / India

The old ghazal, i.e. the poetry of eros in Urdu, Persian and Arabic, has been read as great literature but seldom as a document of history. This book argues that there is one element - the expression of masculine passion (ʽishq) for a masculine object - that has shaped the ghazal historically and across languages. The neglect of this element, which it terms lyric queerness, in mainstream cultural history and even LGBTQ studies, screens from us a lyrical corpus that was historically aware, vernacularizing, and suspicious of other-worldly interpretations and is represented here by the ghazal of the Indian subcontinent.

Shad Naved is a comparatist and translator at Dr B.R. Ambedkar University, Delhi. He has published on the lyric, its multilingual tendencies and its teaching in classrooms today.