Comment citer

Cappello, Daniela: Transgression in the Bengali Avant-garde: The Poetry of the Hungry Generation, Heidelberg: Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing, 2024. https://doi.org/10.11588/hasp.1320

Identifiants

ISBN 978-3-948791-90-2 (Hardcover)
ISBN 978-3-948791-89-6 (PDF)

Publié

07/02/2024

Auteurs

Daniela Cappello

Transgression in the Bengali Avant-garde

The Poetry of the Hungry Generation

Transgression in the Bengali Avant-Garde wants to introduce the Hungry Generation movement to a global audience through its poetry, manifestoes and other literary materials. Emerged from the cities of Patna and Calcutta in the early 1960s, the Hungry Generation gained international attention after the poets' arrest on charges of obscenity in 1964. Fiercely provoking the literary establishment, these Bengali bohemians used poetry and literature as means of cultural radicalism, tackling subjects like sexuality, perversion, alcohol and drug consumption, masturbation, and hyper-masculinity to challenge bourgeois morality and respectability.

The book sheds light on a variety of Hungryalist sources and explores the literature of the Hungry Generation through the filter of 'transgression', showing how this concept unfolded in the language, aesthetics and culture behind this Bengali avant-garde movement. Furthermore, the book will delve into the poetry of some iconic representatives of the Hungry Generation, critically reading their oeuvre in the context of changing models of sexuality, consumption, and modernization in post-colonial India.

Daniela Cappello is a post-doctoral researcher based at L’Orientale University of Naples. Her research areas are Bengali language and literature, modern print cultures and cultural history of the Bengali-speaking region. She holds a PhD in Modern South Asian Languages and Literatures from Heidelberg University.

Chapitres

Table des matières
Pages
PDF
Titelei
i-iv
Contents
v-vii
List of Figures
ix
Notes on Translation and Transliteration
xi-xii
Acknowledgements
xiii-xiv
Introduction
1-38
1 "Poetry Is No More a Civilizing Manoeuvre"
Language and Materiality
39-66
2 "I'll Kick All the Literary Trash in the Ass"
Hunger and the Aesthetics of Transgression
67-84
3 "A Band of Young Bengalis with Tigers in their Tanks"
Modernism, Postmodernism and the Avant-garde
85-107
4 "I Want to Use You Like Amul Butter"
Hyper-masculinity and the Objectification of Bodies
109-124
5 "I Won't Be Able to Become Devdas with my Unhappy Penis"
Anxious Masculinity in Phalguni Ray's Television of a Rotten Soul
125-172
6 "Tropical Kerouacs and Gangetic Ginsbergs"
Avant-garde as a Worlding Practice
173-211
7 Hungryalist-Texts in English Translation
213-284
Bibliography
285-304
Index
305-308
Backcover

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