Movements and schools
The Bengal Renaissance
The great intellectual and literary awakening of Bengal.
In the nineteenth century Calcutta was the capital of British India, and Bengali became there a language of the novel, the stage and the newspaper. Michael Madhusudan Dutt wrote an epic that takes the demon's side against the hero of the Ramayana, Bankim Chandra invented the Bengali historical novel, Tagore carried the movement to its height and received the Nobel in 1913. Religious reform, education for girls, debate on child marriage: literature advanced alongside the reformers. The partitions of Bengal in 1905 and 1947 would break that impulse.
works 6
- PoetryThe Slaying of Meghanadaমেঘনাদবধ কাব্যMichael Madhusudan Dutt · 1861An episode of the Ramayana told from the camp of the vanquished, in blank verse.LiteraturePublic domain
- NovelThe Chieftain's Daughterদুর্গেশনন্দিনীBankim Chandra Chattopadhyay · 1865Bengal in the time of Akbar, between Mughals and Pathans, where three love stories cross around a captive prince.Literature
- TaleThe Make-Believe Princeক্ষীরের পুতুলAbanindranath Tagore · 1896A Bengali fairy tale, written and illustrated by a painter, in which an animal's cunning comes to the aid of a queen neglected by her husband.Literature
- NovelThe Broken Nestনষ্টনীড়Rabindranath Tagore · 1901A trio in Bengali high society: a husband absorbed in his newspaper, an idle young wife, and a student cousin who shares her taste for writing.Literature
- NovelDevdasদেবদাসSarat Chandra Chattopadhyay · 1917A childhood love broken by barriers of caste and fortune, in the rural Bengal of the great landowners, at the beginning of the century.Literature