Abstract:

Romanticism had a considerable impact on Urdu literature between 1901 and 1935. The Aligarh Movement, which shares some common characteristics with the established Western Classicism, was replaced by romanticism. This resulted in a significant transformation in the literary understanding of the period. Sajjad Haıder Yıldırım who is one of the major authors of Urdu literature was born in Bacnur in 1880. After he had graduated from Aligarh College, he worked as a civil servant in different governmental institutions. While he was the assistant of Hacı Navab Ismail Han Dataveli, he became familiar with Turkish literature and translated many plays, stories and novels from Turkish into Urdu. Romantic implications were first to be recognised in The Short Stories and Articles. His work formed the very basis of the Romantic Movement in Urdu prose. Lightning skillfully employed the romantic components such as woman, love, sensuality, imagination, nature, and sexuality in his stories.  Thus, he spoke the unspeakable up to that time and what had been neglected. This study aims to explore the ways how Sajjad Haider Yıldırım initiated the emergence of romanticism in Urdu literature, how he challenged the restrictive, oppressive and established literary conventions and how he transformed all of these into an individual, emotional and fascinating style with his aesthetic, exotic and liberating narration. He greatly contributed to the development of the Urdu romantic tradition in Urdu literature with his distinctive works and as well as his translations from different languages and has a significant influence on the literary and social life of the conservative Muslim India. This powerful impact transformed the traditional literary approach and the short stories tended to be constructed within the stereotyped themes into a modern and liberating framework.  To this end, this paper will focus on the romantic components of Urdu short story tradition with various quotations from Yıldırım's work.

Keywords: