In K. Va. Jagannathan's Explanations of Devotional Literature - Expression of Emotional States

Abstract

Tamil devotional literature is a tradition that grew and flourished carrying various emotional states such as love, surrender, and longing. Among those who conveyed these emotional states to the general reader through explanatory commentaries, K. Va. Jagannathan (1906–1988) is a notable figure. This article examines how he identified and explained the literary expression of devotional emotional states, focusing on his explanatory works written on thevaram, Thiruvasagam, Thiruppugazh, Abirami Anthathi, Periya Puranam, and others. This article analyses the manner in which he emphasized a distinctive emotional quality in each work, and his explanatory strategies that clarified those differences. The conclusion of this study is that he did not present devotion as a single, uniform emotion, but rather placed before the reader a multifaceted emotional state that varies from text to text, transcending such uniformity.