Kannada Literature - Modern Period

Modern Period

The development of modern Kannada literature can be traced to the early 19th century when Maharaja Krishnaraja Wodeyar III and his court poets moved away from the ancient champu form of prose toward prose renderings of Sanskrit epics and plays. Kempu Narayana's Mudramanjusha ("Seal Casket", 1823) is the first modern novel written in Kannada.

Modern Kannada literature was cross-fertilized by the colonial period in India as well., with translations of Kannada works and dictionaries into European languages as well as other Indian languages, and vice versa, and the establishment of European style newspapers and periodicals in Kannada. In addition, in the 19th century, interaction with European technology, including new printing techniques accelerated the development of modern literature.

The first Kannada newspaper called Mangalore Samachara was published by Hermann Mögling in 1843; and the first Kannada periodical, Mysuru Vrittanta Bodhini was published by Bhashyam Bhashyacharya in Mysore around the same time. Hermann Mögling translated Kannada classics into a series called Bibliotheca Carnataca during 1848–1853., while British officers Benjamin L. Rice and J. H. Fleet edited and published critical editions of literary classics, contemporary folk ballads and inscriptions. Following the rich tradition of dictionaries in Kannada since the 11th century, the first dictionaries expressing meanings of Kannada words in European languages were published in the 19th century, the most prominent of them being Ferdinand Kittel's Kannada-English dictionary in 1894.

There was a push towards original works in prose narratives and a standardisation of prose during the late 19th century. Translations of works from English, Sanskrit and other Indian languages like Marathi and Bengali continued and accelerated. Lakshman Gadagkar's Suryakantha (1892) and Gulvadi Venkata Rao's (1899) Indira Bai signalled the move away from the highly stylised mores and aesthetics of prior Kannada works to modern prose, establishing the modern novel genre and fundamentally influencing the essay, literary criticism and drama genres.