1st Edition
Critical Discourse in Bangla
This volume forms a part of the Critical Discourses in South Asia series which deals with schools, movements, and discursive practices in major South Asian languages. It offers crucial insights into the making of Bengali or Bangla literature and its critical tradition across a century. The book brings together English translation of major writings of influential figures dealing with literary criticism and theory, aesthetic and performative traditions, and reinterpretations of primary concepts and categories in Bangla. It presents 32 key texts in literary and cultural studies from Bengal from the middle of the 19th to that of the 20th century, with most of them translated for the first time into English. These seminal essays are linked with socio-historical events and phenomena in the colonial and post-independence period in Bengal, including the background to the Language Movement in Bangladesh. They discuss themes such as integrative aesthetic visions, poetic and literary forms, modernism, imagination, power structures and social struggles, ideological values, cultural renovations, and humanism.
Comprehensive and authoritative, this volume offers an overview of the history of critical thought in Bangla literature in South Asia. It will be essential for scholars and researchers of Bengali/Bangla language and literature, literary criticism, literary theory, comparative literature, Indian literature, cultural studies, art and aesthetics, performance studies, history, sociology, regional studies, and South Asian studies. It will also interest the Bengali-speaking diaspora and those working on the intellectual history of Bengal and conservation of languages and culture
Introduction
Subha Chakraborty Dasgupta and Subrata Sinha
1. Bengal and the Bengali in Charyageeti
Shashibhusan Dasgupta
Translated by Sudeshna Datta Chaudhuri
2. The Emergence of the Baul Sect and the Period of Composition of Baul Songs
Upendranath Bhattacharya
Translated by Sujaan Mukherjee
3. The Termination of Sri Gauranga’s Leela
Dineshchandra Sen
Translated by Debapriya Basu
4. The Gaudiya Vaishnav Order: Its Treatises on Rhetoric and Rasa
Bishnupada Bhattacharya
Translated by Sudeshna Datta Chaudhuri
5. The Early Poets
Iswar Chandra Gupta
Translated by Debapriya Basu
6. A Message to the New Writers of Bengal
Sakuntala, Miranda and Desdemona
Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay
Translated by Subha Chakraborty Dasgupta
7. Preface to Sabuj Patra
Pramatha Chaudhuri
Translated by Tapan Chakraborty
8. The Bengali Youth and Three Poets
Haraprasad Shastri
Translated by Bimbabati Sen
9. The Sign of the Epic
Ramendrasundar Trivedi
Translated by Debapriya Basu
10. Tragedy in Bangla Literature
Mohitlal Majumdar
Translated by Doyeeta Majumder
11. A Consideration of Literature
Rajendralal Mitra
Translated by Sudeshna Datta Chaudhuri
12. Rasa and The Question of Taste
Rajshekhar Bose
Translated by Sudeshna Datta Chaudhuri
13. The Poetic Mind
Jagadish Bhattacharya
Translated by Sudeshna Datta Chaudhuri
14. Three Essays from Literature
Rabindranath Tagore
Translated by Tapan Chakraborty and Subha Chakraborty Dasgupta
15. The Search for World Language and World Literature in Poetry
Alokeranjan Dasgupta
Translated by Subha Chakraborty Dasgupta
16. Rabindranath and his Successors
Buddhadeva Bose
Translated by Samantak Das
17. The Liberation of Poetry
Sudhindranath Datta
Translated by Probal Dasgupta
18. On Poetry
Jibanananda Das
Translated by Sreemati Mukherjee
19. Progressiveness in Bangla Literature
Bishnu Dey
Translated by Parthasarathi Bhaumik
20. Bangla Literature and Muslims
Rezaul Karim
Translated by Tapan Chakraborty
21. Why I Write
Manik Bandyopadhyay
Translated by Tapan Chakraborty
22. My Thoughts on Literature
Ashapurna Devi
Translated by Subha Chakraborty Dasgupta
23. I/ My Writing
Mahasweta Devi
Translated by Subha Chakraborty Dasgupta
24. In Search of a New Form of the Novel
Debes Ray
Translated by Sipra Mukherjee
25. Form in Theatre
Sisir Kumar Bhaduri
Translated by Sucheta Bhattacharya
26. Theatre Moments and the Search for Language
Sankha Ghosh
Translated by Anirban Datta
27. The Language of Theatre
Badal Sircar
Translated by Paromita Chaudhuri
28. The Alkap Theatre Tradition and Third Theatre
Syed Mustafa Siraj
Translated by Sujaan Mukherjee
29. State Language and Language Issues in Bangladesh
Qazi Motahar Husain
Translated by Subha Chakraborty Dasgupta
Biography
Subha Chakraborty Dasgupta is former Professor of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. She was Visiting Professor, University of Delhi, India, and Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan. Her research interests and publications span the fields of cultural studies, gender perspectives, oratures, and translation. She has a book entitled Bibliography of Reception: World Literature in Bengali Periodicals (1890-1900) to her credit, and her most recent volume co-edited with K. Alfons Knauth is Figures of Transcontinental Multilingualism (2018).
Subrata Sinha is Assistant Professor of Bangla at St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata (Raghabpur Campus), India. Earlier, he worked for the School of Cultural Texts and Records, Jadavpur University, and the Archives and Research Centre for Ethnomusicology, Gurgaon, India. His monograph Adhunikatar Kavyatattva o Sudhindranath Datta was published in 2019.
