The Primacy of Criticism: Kuttikrishna Marar and the Normative Frames of Realism

Abstract

This essay focuses on the interventions of the Malayalam literary critic Kuttikrishna Marar (1900–1973) in debates on realism in the 1940s and '50s. The category “realism” acquired a new normative force in Kerala at this time through its association with specific sociopolitical concerns, indicated in notions of jeevatsahityam (literature of life) and purogamanasahityam (progressive literature) advanced by left critics. Marar countered these claims and reformulated the terms of these debates. This essay examines Marar's engagement with the debates on realism in its narrower sense as a mode of representation and its larger sense as an aesthetic orientation toward life.