Studies in Tagore: Critical Essays (Hardbound - 2004)

Rabindranath won the heart of the West and the Nobel Prize as a poet, but he was a versatile genius and his versatility manifested itself in different genres of literature and he was equally facile in all of them. In his novels he not only portrays the problems of his times and deals with the burning issues of his day, suggesting their solutions, but he also probes deep into the minds of his characters, especially of the women.

Studies in Tagore: Critical Essays presents thirteen papers of which eight are devoted to his fiction (covering the majority of his novels), making an incisive study of their principal themes. The first paper makes an in-depth study of the conduct of Tagore’s heroines in the patriarchal set-up and his own attitude to patriarchy. In the full-length papers on Yogayog and the last novels the gender question has been examined from the feminist angle. Different papers study the heroines of Tagore from the traditional, Freudian, Youngian and feminist perspectives. Of the three papers on Tagore’s short stories one makes a comprehensive study of the male characters in the given contexts. The last paper of the Volume is on an off-beat subject (Tagore’s handling of the European charade), while the penultimate paper focuses on Tagore’s Baul connexion.

Dr. Santosh Chakrabarti was Reader in English in a Degree College near Kolkata, West Bengal and is currently a Guest Lecturer in English, Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata. His doctoral dissertation, published as Four Indo-Anglian Poets (a critique on Derozio, Kashiprasad Ghosh, Michael Madhusudan Dutt and Toru Dutt), earned him high acclaim from academicians and critics. He has also to his credit a book in Bengali, mainly on Tagore, entitled Rabindranath O Anyanya Prasanga. He has co-edited Australian Studies: Themes and Issues and also literary journals and anthologies of translations. He is a regular contributor to anthologies of critical essays edited by eminent scholars (published by Atlantic Publishers among others) and prestigious journals in English and Bengali.