New Books Network Madhuri Deshmukh, "The Unraveling Heart: Women's Oral Poetics and Literary Vernacularization in Marathi" (Columbia UP, 2025)
Jan 15, 2026
Madhuri Deshmukh, a Professor of English at Oakton College and a scholar of Marathi literature, dives deep into the world of women's grindmill songs. She reveals how these age-old oral traditions, traditionally overlooked in literary studies, embody rich poetic archives. Deshmukh discusses the blend of labor and art, detailing her fieldwork and the significant influence of these songs on Marathi literature. She also highlights the creative contributions of marginalized women, emphasizing their pivotal role in shaping vernacular literary culture.
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Fieldwork That Redirected The Project
- Madhuri Deshmukh began researching the bhakti poet Zana(bai) and went into rural Maharashtra to record women singers.
- Her fieldwork uncovered a vast grindmill-song tradition that redirected the project's scope into oral poetics.
Oral Archive Shaped Literary Bhakti
- Grindmill songs form an enormous oral archive of women's poetry that deeply influenced Marathi bhakti literature.
- Deshmukh argues this archive shaped motifs, tropes, and poetic structures across the written bhakti corpus.
Pair Fieldwork With Textual Reading
- Use a dialogic methodology that moves between fieldwork and textual analysis to study oral-literary interplay.
- Let ethnographic encounters reshape textual readings rather than treating texts as primary in isolation.
