The rhetorical strategy of an autobiography: Reading Satyavati's A tmacaritamu

Vakulabharanam Rajagopal
Additional contact information
Vakulabharanam Rajagopal: University of Wisconsin-Madison

The Indian Economic & Social History Review, 2003, vol. 40, issue 4, 377-402

Abstract: This article describes and analyses the autobiography of an ordinary woman, perhaps the first autobiography by a woman in Telugu. Despite its unique features, the text, strangely enough, fell into oblivion. Published in 1934, Satyavati's Atmacaritamu contains a radical critique of religion and society. Though a widow, Satyavati claimed the status of pativrata and through this ingenious rhetorical strategy legitimated her critique as internal to tradition. The article also situates the text in the corpus of writings by women all over India in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, and traces the evolution of the 'women's question'in colonial Andhra in relation to this literature.

Date: 2003
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/001946460304000401 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:indeco:v:40:y:2003:i:4:p:377-402

DOI: 10.1177/001946460304000401

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Indian Economic & Social History Review
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().