Reading Tamil Catholic literature in the Eighteenth Century

Jesuit missionaries who arrived in India in 1542, sponsored by the Portuguese crown, became major cultural agents of change through proselytism along the east coast and in the interior of the Tamil Nadu. Always in small number themselves, by the eighteenth century they had founded many churches and congregations of Christians, mostly led by local laymen working as catechists. Even though missionaries aimed to convert all layers of the society, their efforts were particularly targeted towards these literate and important members of the community, who were to carry out their mission on a capillary level.

Their teaching took the form of oral sermons and catechetical instruction as well as written catechisms and devotional books. In the early eighteenth century, missionaries also begun to write poetry that would convey Catholic messages according to Tami literary conventions. It is at this moment, I argue, that Tamil Catholic literature entered for the first time the Tamil literary sphere, and lay catechists were its main intended readers. In this presentation, I will discuss why the focus on reading is helpful to understand the relationship between the mission and local social and cultural concerns. I will further explore possible strategies for recovering a history of the practises of reading, and of the readers of Tamil Catholic texts in the eighteenth and early nineteenth-century century.

The first part of the presentation will focus on literature, especially on the epic poem Tēmpāvaṇi, the masterpiece of Tamil Catholic literature written by Costanzo Giuseppe Beschi (1680-17470). I will analyze the literary conventions and innovations at play in the Tēmpāvaṇi from the point of view of the eyes meant to read the text, and explore their possible modes and habits of reading. These were, I will show, the eyes of the catechists and Catholic laymen close to the mission. Moreover, I will explore the circulation and reception of the Tēmpāvaṇi as it emerges from different sources, from the paratexts accompanying manuscripts of the poem to catechist family histories, and the role the poem played in the creation of a cultural and social identity for the catechists.