Negotiating Gaps Between Interpretation and Practice of Cultural Traditions in Bengal Renaissance through the Lens of New Historicism
Keywords:
New Historicism, Imperial dilemma, deconstructivist dialogism, RenaissanceAbstract
The very essence of New Historicism lies in the historicity of texts and aligning it to the literary value system of the times. Every literature can be contextualized according to the fashion of the times and in it, they hold a larger part of the socio-cultural traditions. Thereby, New Historicism has skillfully rejected the perpetuity of texts emphasized by the Liberal Humanism and autotelic features in New Criticism and presents it like a mirror of the times. The idea of self fashioning has been emphasized to the greatest degree in the works produced during the Renaissance in Italy and to a greater extent in the Bengal Renaissance as well. Thus it is efficiently based on the idea of the disconnected conversations, interrupted histories of the times and the fact that modern history is a “co-text'' and fiction of the times the author is living in. Thus Stephen Greenblatt’s work on the Renaissance namely Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (1980) is important to understand the basis of utilizing his own theory to the Renaissance plays and the similar can be extended to the foyer of the material study of texts during the Bengal Renaissance and the reflection of the social constructs during the times in literature of the times and beyond. This is what I attempt to reflect in my paper through a brief disconnected history of the Bengal Renaissance and attempt to disintegrate the time according to the demand of the literary theory of New Historicism.
References
2. Foucault M. Archaeology of knowledge. Routledge, UK, 1972,3.
3. Majumdar R.C. British Paramountcy and Indian Renaissance. Part II, Vol. X, Bharatiya Vidya Bhawan,Mumbai, 1965, 363.
4. Roy M.N. India in Transition. Nachiketa Publication, 1971, 20.
5. Roy M.N. India in Transition. Nachiketa Publication, 1971, 20.
6. How the Fakir-Sanyasi rebellion inspired Vandemataram. https://madrascourier.com/insight/how-the-fakir-sannyasi-rebellion-inspired-vande-mataram/. 28 August, 2017.
7. Roy M.N. India in Transition. Nachiketa Publication, 1971, 20.
8. Shlapentokh D. Marx, the “Asiatic Mode of Production,” and “Oriental Despotism” as “True” Socialism, Comparative Sociology 2019; 18(4), 489-521. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/15691330-12341505.
9. Marx K. The Future Results of British Rule in India, first published in the New York Daily Tribune, 8th August, 1853, https://marxists.catbull.com/archive/marx/works/1853/07/22.htm.
10. Marx K. The Future Results of British Rule in India., first published in the New York Daily Tribune, 8th August, 1853, https://marxists.catbull.com/archive/marx/works/1853/07/22.htm.
11. Chatterjee M. Society and Politics in Bengal 1857-85, Unpublished Ph. D. thesis, University of Calcutta, Calcutta.
12. Derozio H.L.V.Sonnet to the Pupils of the Hindu College
13. https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.42322/2015.42322.Poems-Of-Henry-Louis-Vivian-Derozio_djvu.txt.1831.
14. Aurobindo R. The Renaissannce in India and other essays on Indian Culture. Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry, 1997, 39.
15. Greenblatt S.Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. University of Chicago Press,Chicago, 1980.
16. Dasgupta S. Awakening: The Story of the Bengal Renaissance. Random House India, Noida, India, 2011.
17. Kopf D. British Orientalism and Bengal Renaissance. The dynamics of Indian Modernization 1773-1835, Firma K.L., Calcutta, 1939.
