Contents

Introduction: Literature as the Mirror of Modernity

  1    On the Advantages of Being a Barbarian

  2    Literature and the Moral Imaginations of Modernity

  3    The Two Histories of Literary Culture in Bengal

  4    A Strange Love of Abstractions: The Making of a Language of Patriotism in Modern Bengali

  5    Tagore and Transformations in the Ideals of Love

  6    The Poetry of Interiority: The Creation of a Language of Modern Subjectivity in Tagore’s Poetry

  7    Laughter and Subjectivity: The Self-Ironical Tradition in Bengali Literature

  8    Reading a Song of the City: Images of the City in Literature and Films

  9    The Art of Despair: The Sense of the City in Modern Bengali Poetry

10    The Invention of Private Life: a reading of Sibnath Sastri’s Autobiography

11    The Second Mahabharata

Index