The Avantisundarī is a work of Sanskrit literary prose attributed to the South Indian poet and theorist Daṇḍin (late-seventh to early-eighth c. CE). The Kāvyādarśa, Daṇḍin’s work on poetics, is renowned in the field of early literary and aesthetic criticism. And his other prose work, the Daśakumāracarita, has been the subject of a number of studies and translations. Yet despite being one of the few works of early gadyakāvya, “literary prose,” the Avantisundarī has not received much attention. This dissertation calls for a more serious engagement with the Avantisundarī, and in doing so, it calls for a re-engagement with theories of gadyakāvya. For, even though the work conforms through its ornate prose style to other early gadyakāvya works, it defies several other genre features, thus creating a more complex picture of the prose form. With its biographical depictions of its author, Daṇḍin, the Avantisundarī’s paratextual material also brings to the fore new definitions of sociability and refinement. While the dissertation is grounded in its engagement with the Avantisundarī, it also offers new tools for literary analysis and for thinking about literary representations of the historical author and the social dynamics of the poet in early-medieval South Asia.
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