Indian Angles: English Verse in Colonial India from Jones to Tagore (Series in Victorian Studies)

In Indian Angles, Mary Ellis Gibson provides a new historical approach to Indian English literature. Gibson shows that poetry, not fiction, was the dominant literary genre of Indian writing in English until 1860 and that poetry written in colonial situations can tell us as much or even more about figuration, multilingual literacies, and histories of nationalism than novels can. Gibson recreates the historical webs of affiliation and resistance that were experienced by writers in colonial India—writers of British, Indian, and mixed ethnicities. Advancing new theoretical and historical paradigms for reading colonial literatures, Indian Angles makes accessible many writers heretofore neglected or virtually unknown. Gibson recovers texts by British women, by non-elite British men, and by persons who would, in the nineteenth century, have been called Eurasian. Her work traces the mutually constitutive history of English language poets from Sir William Jones to Toru Dutt and Rabindranath Tagore. Drawing on contemporary postcolonial theory, her work also provides new ways of thinking about British internal colonialism as its results were exported to South Asia. In lucid and accessible prose, Gibson presents a new theoretical approach to colonial and postcolonial literatures. A 2012 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title A new historical approach to Indian English literature Mary Ellis Gibson shows that poetry, not fiction, was the dominant literary genre of Indian writing in English until 1860 and that poetry written in colonial situations can tell us as much or even more about figuration, multilingual literacies, and histories of nationalism than novels can. Gibson re-creates the historical webs of affiliation and resistance that were experienced by writers in colonial Indiawriters of British, Indian, and mixed ethnicities. Advancing new theoretical and historical paradigms for reading colonial literatures, Indian Angles makes accessible many writers heretofore neglected or virtually unknown. Gibson recovers texts by British women, by nonelite British men, and by persons who would, in the nineteenth century, have been called Eurasian. Her work traces the mutually constitutive history of English-language poets from Sir William Jones to Toru Dutt and Rabindranath Tagore. Drawing on contemporary postcolonial theory, her work also provides new ways of thinking about British internal colonialism as its results were exported to South Asia. In lucid and accessible prose, Gibson presents a new theoretical approach to colonial and postcolonial literatures. Introduction -- Part One. Languages, Tropes, And Landscape In The Beginnings Of English Language Poetry: Contact Poetics In Eighteenth-century Calcutta: Sir William Jones, John Horsford, And Anna Maria; Bards And Sybils: Landscape, Gender, And The Culture Of Dispute In The Poems Of H. L. V. Derozio And Emma Roberts -- Part Two. The Institutions Of Colonial Mimesis, 1830/1857: Books, Reading, And The Profession Of Letters: David Lester Richardson And The Construction Of A British Canon In India; Sighing, Or Not, For Albion: Kasiprasad Ghosh, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, And Mary Carshore -- Part Three. Nationalisms, Religion, And Aestheticism In The Late Nineteenth Century: From Christian Piety To Cosmopolitan Nationalisms: The Dutt Family Album And The Poems Of Mary E. Leslie And Toru Dutt; Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, And Aestheticism In Fin-de-siècle London: Manmohan Ghose, Sarojini Naidu, And Rabindranath Tagore. Mary Ellis Gibson. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Contents ......Page 8 Illustrations......Page 10 Acknowledgments......Page 12 A Note on Names......Page 16 Introduction......Page 18 Part One: Languages, Tropes, and Landscape in the Beginnings of English Language Poetry......Page 32 1: Contact Poetics in Eighteenth-Century Calcutta......Page 34 2: Bards and Sybils......Page 80 Part Two: The Institutions of Colonial Mimesis, 1830–57......Page 116 3: Books, Reading, and the Profession of Letters......Page 118 4: Sighing, or Not, for Albion......Page 154 Part Three: Nationalisms, Religion, and Aestheticism in the Late Nineteenth Century......Page 196 5: From Christian Piety to Cosmopolitan Nationalisms......Page 198 6: Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, and Aestheticism in Fin-de-Siècle London......Page 244 Epilogue......Page 285 Notes......Page 298 Bibliography......Page 326 Index......Page 342 Indian Angles is a new historical approach to Indian English literature. It shows that poetry, not fiction, was the dominant literary genre of Indian writing in English until 1860 and re-creates the historical webs of affiliation and resistance that writers in colonial India-writers of British, Indian, and mixed ethnicities-experienced.