It is a collection of 10 essays on the transcultural encounter between Bengal and Italy from the late 19 & 20th century. It explores the largely unknown features of a multifaceted dialogue in the fields of literature, music, architecture, art, cinema, diplomacy, entrepreneurship, travels, education and intellectual engagement.
The ten chapters collected in this book manifest the current global interest in trans-border dialogues and trace the origins and development of Italian and Bengali internationalisms in the period from the mid-19th to the early 20th century. Despite having differing political statuses and lacking a shared geographical or historical space, Bengal and Italy remained uniquely connected and, at times, actively sought to transcend different kinds of constraints in their search for a significant dialogue and mutual enrichment in the fields of literature, music, architecture, art, cinema, diplomacy, entrepreneurship, travels, education and intellectual engagement. In this context, the volume confronts strategies of evaluation adopted by prominent representatives of the Bengali and Italian cultural environments with particular emphasis on readings embedded in the moment of contact. Both regions benefitted from this elective affinity as they advanced along their respective paths towards a fuller awareness of their specific identity, and thus set a positive example of transcultural understanding which may inspire todays world.
List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
Contributors
Introduction: Paromita Chakravarti & Mario Prayer
Part
1. Encounters in words and sounds: Literature, Music, Performance
Chapter
1. From Dante to Rabindranath: An Unfolding Renaissance: Sukanta
Chaudhuri
Chapter
2. Rabindranath Tagore as Reflected in the Works of
Early-20th-Century Italian Composers: Luisa Prayer
Chapter
3. Translating Cultures: Italian Dramatists on the Bangla Stage:
Paromita Chakravarti
Part
2. Encounters in shapes and images: Architecture, Art, Cinema
Chapter
4. Neoclassical Architecture in 19th-Century Calcutta and the Case
of Bengali Domestic Residences: Monolina Bhattacharyya
Chapter
5. The Italian Connection to Indian Art in Calcutta: The
Contribution of Olinto Ghilardi and Sashi Hesh in the Late 19th and Early
20th Centuries: Rituparna Basu
Chapter
6. Before Neorealism, After Commedia: Tracing an Aesthetic
Décalage: Trinankur Banerjee
Part
3. Encounters through experience: Business, Travel, Politics
Chapter
7. Italy and the Discovery of India: The Early Phase of Italian
Foreign Policy in Bengal (1849-1936): Marzia Casolari
Chapter
8. "The Italian [ ...] who Comes Here to try his Luck [ ...] Only
Deals in Trade": Italian Traders in Bengal 1850-1950 ca.: Antonella Viola
Chapter
9. Travels in Italy: Bengali Writings in the Late 19th and Early
20th Centuries: Sanjukta Das Gupta
Chapter
10. Emissaries of Swadeshi: Bengali Internationalists in Inter-War
Italy: Mario Prayer
- Postscript. Interview of Consul General Dr. Gianluca Rubagotti with the
Editors of the Volume on Continuing Cultural Exchanges Between Italy and
Bengal
Index
Paromita Chakravarti is Professor, Department of English, and has been the Director of the School of Womens Studies, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. She completed her doctoral studies at the University of Oxford, UK. She teaches Renaissance drama, womens writing, sexuality and film studies. Her work in the School of Womens Studies has focused on education and sexuality. Her edited book is Women Contesting Culture: Changing Frames of Gender Politics in India (2012) and co-edited books are Shakespeare and Indian Cinemas: Shakespeare and Indian Cinemas (2018) and Asian Interventions in Global Shakespeare: All the Worlds His Stage (2021).
Mario Prayer is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History of India at Sapienza University of Rome. His research interests focus on the political and cultural history of 20th-century Bengal, Indo-Italian relations in the inter-war period, Mahatma Gandhis reconstruction movement and the Panchayats in West Bengal. He is the author of The Gandhians of Bengal: Nationalism, Social Reconstruction and Cultural Orientations 19201942 (2001) and has translated works by Rabindranath Tagore and Manik Bandopadhyay from the original Bengali into Italian.
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