PAPERBACKING THE RENAISSANCE

THE BENGAL RENAISSANCE

Identity and Creativity from Rammohun Roy to Rabindranath Tagore

Subrata Dasgupta

Scholars have long debated the very idea of a ‘Bengal Renaissance’. Their controversies have dwelt almost entirely over whether there was anything like a ‘renaissance’ at all, and its significance or otherwise from social, political, and cultural perspectives.

This book addresses the issue from a very different framework. Subrata Dasgupta—an eminent scientist and author of a highly regarded intellectual biography of the scientist Jagadis Chandra Bose—approaches the topic from the perspective of philosophy of science and the psychology of creativity. His intention is to show that the phenomenon of the Bengal Renaissance is characterized by a certain collective cognitive identity, which had its roots in the work of the British Orientalists, beginning with William Jones, and which took form amidst a small but remarkable community of highly creative individuals in nineteenth-century Bengal.

The most notable figures in this creative community were the social reformer and savant Rammohun Roy; the poet Henry Derozio; the scholar-poet Michael Madhusudan Datta; the novelist Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay; pioneering scientists and medical men such as Mahendra Lal Sircar, Jagadis Chandra Bose, and Prafulla Chandra Ray; the mystic Sri Ramakrishna, the pedagogue Swami Vivekananda; and the all-encompassing literary figure Rabindranath Tagore. The core work of each of these major figures is outlined for its distinctive style, analysed for its contribution to an intellectual milieu, and assessed for its effect on cultural life.

Written in completely accessible and elegant English, this is a work for general readers. Those unfamiliar with the basics of the Bengal Renaissance will find it an excellent introduction to the area; scholars familiar with the area will find this perspective on cultural history from the perspective of science and psychology quite novel, unusual, and compelling.

SUBRATA DASGUPTA is the Computer Science Trust Fund Endowed Eminent Scholar, and Director of the Institute of Cognitive Science, at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where he is also Professor of History. He is the author of several books, including Jagadis Chandra Bose and the Indian Response to Western Science (Permanent Black paperback, 2009), and a boyhood memoir, Salaam Stanley Matthews (Granta Books, 2006).

World rights / ISBN 81-7824-279-6 / 286pp / Rs 295

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