01882nam a2200169   4500999001900000008004100019100003800060245004300098260004700141300003700188520126000225650003501485773004701520906002101567942001201588952011201600  c512565d512565191129b           ||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d  aKamath, Harshita Mruthinti914048  aKsetrayya: The making of a Telugu poet  b Indian Economic and Social History Review  a56(3), Jul-Sep, 2019: p.253-282.  aKṣētrayya is the attributed author of Telugu padams (short lyrical poems) dedicated to Muvva Gōpāla, a form of the Hindu deity Kṛṣṇa. Kṣētrayya is commonly described as a peripatetic poet from the village of Muvva in Telugu-speaking South India who wandered south to the Nāyaka courts of Tanjavur in the seventeenth century. Contrary to popular and scholarly assumptions about this poet, this article argues that Kṣētrayya was not a historical figure, but rather, a literary persona constructed into a Telugu bhakti poet-saint through the course of three centuries of literary reform. A close reading of selected padams attributed to Kṣētrayya reveals the uniquely tangible world of female sexuality painted by the speakers of these poems. However, these padams became sanitized through the course of colonial and post-colonial anti-nautch and Telugu literary reform. In line with this transformation, the hagiography of the poet Kṣētrayya was carefully molded to fit a prefabricated typology of a Telugu bhakti poet-saint. Countering the longstanding narrative of solo male authorship, the article raises the possibility that these padams were composed by multiple authors, including vēśyas (courtesans). - Reproduced.  aPoetry - India - Telugu914049  a Indian Economic and Social History Review  aCultural history  2ddccAR  00102ddc40709386616aIIPAbIIPAd2019-11-29h56(3), Jul-Sep, 2019: p.253-282.pAR121916r2019-11-29yAR