This element got a great boost in the 18th century when there weren’t many newspapers or media of information available to the public.
HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN URDU LANGUAGE FULL
Just as Elizabethan English is full of social and regional realities, Urdu holds a remarkable wealth of the conventions of many cultures and languages. Urdu poetry, as it is derived from Persian, Turkish and Arabic, acquired many conventions in its poetry that came from these languages. The 18th century saw a phenomenal rise in Urdu poetry when Urdu replaced Persian as the lingua franca of the region. Urdu poetry of the Indian subcontinent as we know it today did not take its final shape until the 17th century when it was declared the official language of the court. The fact is many poets up in the North had already been writing Urdu poetry, namely Kabir Das, Mira Bai, Guru Nanak, Malik Mohammad Jaisi and Abdul Rahim Khan Khanan, who lived much earlier than Amir Khusro. Since the language was written in the devanagri script for quite some time around Delhi, it had been erroneously assumed that the first Urdu poet was Amir Khusro (1253-1325) from the Deccan. Affected by the dialects of the South, the language became known as Deccani (after Hyderabad Deccan), having adopted the Persian script and replaced Persian in offices as the official language. The language was introduced to the southern province of India, Hyderabad Deccan, by the armies and followers of the Tughlaq and Khilji kings in the 14th century. The name gUrdug was given to this thriving language of the region in the period of the Mughal Emperor Shah Jehan (1627-1658). In the 13th century, the language of India became widely known as Hindvi, Hindi, and Brij Bhasha and was written in the original devanagri script. Whereas much of the vocabulary of the original languages (Sauraseni, for example) changed, the basic grammar structure remained intact. Other languages that found their way into the languages of India were Turkish, Arabic and later English. When Delhi was the seat of the Muslim Empire in the late 12th century, the languages around Delhi, mainly Brij Bhasha and Sauraseni became heavily mixed with Persian, the lingua franca of the Muslim rulers. Muslims brought many different languages to India, and diluted India’s languages freely with words from their own.
Urdu, literally meaning “camp” in Turkish, is a mixture of many tongues and languages. The following chapter will examine the life and works of Ghalib and the third chapter will offer a broad view of Ghalib’s art of expression in love sonnets, the ghazals. In this chapter we will examine the roots of Urdu language, Urdu poetry and particularly the genre of love sonnets, ghazals, in Urdu. Since Ghalib, undoubtedly the greatest poet of Urdu language, expressed himself mainly through his writings of love sonnets, it is imperative that we examine the art of love sonnets, the language they are written in, and the environs that prompted these writings to understand how Ghalib became a master of this genre. To understand a great poet, therefore, we must first look into his mind and his awareness of the milieu exterior. From expression of love for a woman to revolt against a regime, poetry carries in it an element of subtlety and spontaneity-something created by the environs of the poet. Interestingly, though languages differ significantly in the manner of expression, the nature of poetic expression remains common indicating that poetry is more of a human phenomenon rather than syntactical expression. Poetry is universal as every language spoken by mankind has in it some poetic elements. Expressing an ordinary event in an effective, heart-stealing style of writing that creates a sharp reaction in the heart and mind of the reader.An art through which a poet can excite the emotions and feelings of others.The concoction of all knowledge and craft.The fountain to civilization, constitution and different arts and crafts.A description of life written with imagination and emotion.The expression of the heart, human experience, feelings and thoughts.
Poetry is a personal and emotional genre making it difficult to truly explain what constitutes poetry however, we can summarize it in the following definitions of poetry: