مرز ا محمدہادی رسوا:اردو میں نفسیاتی تنقید کا نقیب ِاوّل

Mirza Muhammad Hadi Ruswa: The Pioneer of Psychological Criticism in Urdu

Abstract

Mirza Muhammad Hadi Ruswa is considered a popular and eminent Urdu novelist in the early 19th century. His novel “Umrao Jan Ada” was acclaimed and received positive responses from critics and readers. This novel may also be the first psychological novel in Urdu. In this novel, he portrays the life of a scarlet woman named “Umrao Jan Ada. Ruswa has a multidimensional personality; besides this, he is one of the most famous and prominent novelists, but also a well-known critic. Ruswa is the first critic who laid the foundation of the psychological school in Urdu criticism. Earlier, the criticism of the Urdu novel was theoretical criticism, which only discussed the form of the story. In this regard, the preface of the novel “Afsha e Raz” (افشائےراز) and his five critical letters in which he recommended the use of psychology to examine the criticism of the novel. Ruswa has the primacy in Urdu literature that he systematically tried to understand literature in the light of psychology; he can rightly be called the first psychological critic of Urdu.