ABSTRACT
Ketavarapu Katyayani, known by her pen name Katyayani Vidmahe in literary circles, is a renowned researcher and critic in Telugu with a gender, regional and progressive perspective. The essay in this chapter offers a gender perspective to understand the classical poetics where the woman is always an object and the man is the subject. Rasa, as the essay says, is the most important principle in Indian poetics. Katyayani Vidmahe deconstructs the male-centric rasa theory and provides critical tools in order to understand the hidden layers of meanings in the rasa theory. The essay uses the technique of a personal narrative which adds to the experimentation with genre thus transgressing the boundaries and regulations designed by the classical poetics for writing. Katyayani Vidmahe’s subjective experience as a researcher and a teacher adds new dimensions to the reading as well as to the style of the essay. The subjective turn in the post-colonial, feminist and marginalised writings has initiated a very powerful counter-discourse against the hegemonised objective narratives and rigid frameworks by the critic.
