Rabindranath Tagore’s The Home and the World: A Critical Companion

Designed as a companion to Rabindranath Tagore’s ’Ghare-Baire’ (The Home and the World), the ten essays in this volume cover the novel in terms of the complexity of colonial modernity. Taking into account Tagore’s critique of religious nationalism and the historical processes, in which the novel is embedded, the authors examine questions of gender, nationalism and the novel form. Issues of gender such as the creations of modern selfhood, the problems of representing the woman as the nation and the crises of masculinity are discussed. Similarly, Tagore’s critique of Hindu nationalism is evaluated by its many-sided implications: contextual resonances, anticolonial vision of social relationships and collective subjectivity, as well as by its aporias. The book will be of great value and interest to those studying Indian literature, post-coloniality, gender representations and nationalism. This work represents an important contribution to interdisciplinary and cultural studies of the Indian sub-continent.

Pradip Kumar Datta is a Reader in English at Sri Venkateswara College, Delhi University. He has published articles on literatures in English, Indian writing in English and Bengali, and modern Indian history.