The poetry of minor characters and everyday life in the "Sĕrat Cĕnthini"

Abstract

Tony Day is an independent scholar living in Graz, Austria. He is interested in studying the literatures and histories of Southeast Asian from early times to the contemporary moment in a comparative, global framework. He is currently working on a collection of translations and interpretations of the Sĕrat Cĕnthini with Nancy Florida. His publications include Fluid iron; State formation in Southeast Asia (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2002), “Polycentric cosmopolitans; Writing world literature in Indonesia and Vietnam, 1920s to 1950s and beyond”, in: Amelia M. Glaser and Steven S. Lee (eds), Comintern Aesthetics (University of Toronto Press, 2020, pp. 199-223), and “Cold War violence, nationalism and structures of feeling in the literatures of Southeast Asia”, in: Andrew Hammond (ed.), The Palgrave handbook of Cold War literature (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, pp. 633-650). Day to be found in the text. My interest in the excerpt I have translated from Canto 364 focuses on two aspects of this process of literary revision: characterization and the representation of everyday life.