Sub-Project The Didactics of Framing, the Framing of Didactics (MC 4.2)

Project Leader: Hans Harder

This project addressed two complementary transcultural processes in 20th century India, namely the framing of a Hindi literary sphere and the mediation of communist internationalism, with reference to the notion of the paratext as didactic device. The political projects enabled by any text are directed by the framing that is suggested by the paratext. This becomes central to the use of the texts by readers and by various intermediaries, for whom their own roles in the didactic project is set out by the paratext. For the cases at hand, paratexts played a seminal role. The concerted study of these directional devices provided new insights into the fashioning of the political projects enabled through them, and into the communicational mechanisms triggered by transcultural paratexts.