Madly After the Muses

Madly After the Muses examines the use of Graeco-Roman samplings in the Bengali works of Michael Madhusudan Datta (1824-1873) the nineteenth-century poet and playwright. His oeuvre which includes a Bengali play dramatizing a Hindu version of the Judgement of Paris a retelling of the Sanskrit Ramayana using various Vergilian and Homeric tropes a Hindu response to Ovid''s Heroides and a Bengali prose version of the first half of Homer''s Iliad utilize the Greek and Roman classics in a surprising and subversive way. Though steeped in contemporary British literary culture Madhusudan''s Bengali works bypassed the literary trends of his British contemporaries and most strikingly used the Western classics to defy the hegemonic elite culture of the Hindu pundits. He treated traditional Hindu material with innovations inspired by the literature of the Graeco-Roman world and provided an Orientalist Indo-European reading of the ancient cultures of India and Europe. By subverting contemporary British constructions of what constituted classical he also highlighted counter-currents within the Western classical discourse. In this volume Riddiford introduces new texts and contexts to the fields of classical reception and postcolonial scholarship and includes appendices with translated excerpts from Bengali works not previously translated into English. He also examines the Bengali poet''s classical education drawing on new material from various archives to show that he was given a rigorous British-style classical education offering a surprising early chapter in the story of the dissemination and reception of the Graeco-Roman classics in India.Table of Contents:PrefaceAcknowledgementsList of IllustrationsMadhusudan: a classicizing oeuvre in contextThe Padmabatï natak (1860) and the Judgement of ParisThe Meghnadbadh kabya (1861) Homer''s Iliad and Vergil''s AeneidFurther receptions of Vergil''s AeneidThe Bïrangana kabya (1862) and Ovid''s HeroidesThe Hektor-badh (1871) and Homer''s IliadConclusionAbove all Greek above all Roman fameAppendix 1Madhusuda'' s New Testament examination Script (9th June 1847)Appendix 2Editions of classical textsAppendix 3Judgement scene in Padmabatï natakAppendix 4Synopsis of the Padmabatï natakAppendix 5Simhal-bijay kabyaAppendix 6Synopsis of the poems of the Bïrangana kabyaAppendix 7Sources of the Bïrangana kabya and the HeroidesAppendix 8Preface to the Hektor-badhAppendix 9Madhusudan''s Orientalist Indo-EuropeanismBibliographyIndex