Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Gora: A Critical Companion situates Rabindranath Tagore's iconic text in his times and ours, examining contexts that produced it and reasons that make it acutely relevant today. A Critical Companion revisits this foundational text from perspectives as varied and interdisciplinary as textual and genre studies; translation and reception studies; narratology, gender, race and caste studies. It situates Gora within spacio-imaginative configurations such as nation, desh, rashtra, mulk, swadeshi samaj, swaraj, ramrajya, and as engaging with questions of hospitality, philoxenos and xenophobia. It provides new readings with regard to the complex operations of religion and 'formations of the secular' in times of colonial modernity. A Critical Companion is distinctive in providing a translation of Tagore's essay Atmaparichay and Buddhadev Bose's Bangla essay on Gora. It provides a valuable critical support to contemporary readers that approach Tagore from disparate cultural backgrounds, and encourages them to revisit Gora to discover new meanings for these times.