Announcing a special issue from University of Toronto Quarterly

Rabindranath Tagore: Facets of a Cultural Icon

Now available online at:
http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/x3tu0018337n/

 

Announcing UTQ (77:4) highlighting a multifaceted talent and Nobel
prize-winner in the field of literature, Rabindranath Tagore.

Rabindranath Tagore, the first Asian Nobel Laureate (in 1913 for literature)
can well be deemed a 'cultural icon' in the sense that he embodied and
articulated an integrated conception of human culture through his
charismatic personality and manifold creative works. Tagore's vision of
human life is one that stems from the cultural soil of his native Bengal but
opens onto and embraces humanity as a whole, each portion of which remains
rooted in its own native cultural soil. Those who find converging in
Rabindranath Tagore and his work a dynamic view of how human life actually
is and of how it might be yet more authentically human have reason to hope
that he and his work may become more widely known and more accurately
appreciated worldwide.

 

To that end, this issue of University of Toronto Quarterly 77.4 Fall 2008,
edited by Kathleen and Joseph O'Connell, presents eleven essays by
authorities on several aspects of Rabindranath Tagore's immense oeuvre and
impact. The contributors provide guidance to those would discover and
reclaim Tagore, creative and humane cultural icon that he was and remains,
in as authentic and faithful a way as possible, neither confining him in a
stultifying orthodoxy of interpretation that he would abhor nor allowing
substandard or

tendentious misrepresentations of him and his work to go unchallenged.

 

Each author draws upon his or her particular expertise to refract and
illuminate significant sectors of Tagore's remarkably complex and productive
life and work. Krishna Dutta taps into his letters as a 'beacon' to
biographers like herself. Kathleen O'Connell and Uma Das Gupta present
Tagore, respectively, as innovative educator and pioneer in rural
development. Ana Jelnikar explores the personal, cultural and political
factors behind W.B. Yeats's (mis)reading of Tagore, while Giuseppe Flora
mines Italian sources to explain the poet's

tortuous relationship with Italy as it struggled between fascism and
liberalism in the 1920s. Anisuzzaman reports on the sometimes acrimonious
'claiming' versus 'disclaiming' of Tagore in former East Pakistan and
current Bangladesh. Saranindranath Tagore (grandnephew of the poet) gives a
philosophical exposition and defence of the poet-philosopher's conception of
cosmopolitanism. Mandakranta Bose reflects

on the distinctive quality and problematic fate of Rabindra-nritya, a unique
style of modern dance introduced by Tagore. William Radice argues for a new
and more insightful way of classifying Rabindra-sangit, the body of
Bangla-language songs that Tagore considered the most valuable and enduring
of his manifold cultural legacy. Suddhaseel Sen complements Radice's essay
with a detailed analysis of Europeancomposers' efforts to set to Western
music poems of Tagore (in translations). Mahmud Shah Qureshi concludes the
issue with an extensive review of literary and assessments of Rabindranath
Tagore by Bengali Muslim writers-men and women who shared the language in
which the poet was most talented and prolific, Bangla (Bengali), but were of
a different religio-communal background.

 

Articles:

 
<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/d63483112611142u/?p=35561873aed043
f2993d77ea3ddc067e&pi=0> Introduction: Rabindranath Tagore as 'Cultural
Icon'
Joseph T. O'Connell and Kathleen M. O'Connell

 

 
<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/d3164540w1x28503/?p=35561873aed043
f2993d77ea3ddc067e&pi=1> Tagore's Letters: A Beacon for Biographers
Krishna Dutta

 

 
<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/d151117678547661/?p=35561873aed043
f2993d77ea3ddc067e&pi=2> Freedom, Creativity, and Leisure in Education:
Tagore in Canada, 1929
Kathleen O'Connell

 

 
<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/6m773526254087l7/?p=35561873aed043
f2993d77ea3ddc067e&pi=3> Tagore's Ideas of Social Action and the Sriniketan
Experiment of Rural Reconstruction, 1922--41
Uma Das Gupta

 

 
<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/7720085347l4156t/?p=35561873aed043
f2993d77ea3ddc067e&pi=4> W.B. Yeats's (Mis)Reading of Tagore: Interpreting
an Alien Culture
Ana Jelnikar

 

 
<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/fg43t824061r9245/?p=35561873aed043
f2993d77ea3ddc067e&pi=5> Tagore and Italy: Facing History and Politics
Giuseppe Flora

 

 
<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/y477m1p8p32713k4/?p=35561873aed043
f2993d77ea3ddc067e&pi=6> Claiming and Disclaiming a Cultural Icon: Tagore in
East Pakistan and Bangladesh
Anisuzzaman

 

 
<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/8217r0um5t853w02/?p=35561873aed043
f2993d77ea3ddc067e&pi=7> Tagore's Conception of Cosmopolitanism: A
Reconstruction
Saranindranath Tagore

 

 
<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/q8858mj3521r1j88/?p=35561873aed043
f2993d77ea3ddc067e&pi=8> Indian Modernity and Tagore's Dance
Mandakranta Bose

 

 
<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/9l4j371261672637/?p=35561873aed043
f2993d77ea3ddc067e&pi=9> Keys to the Kingdom: The Search for How Best to
Understand and Perform the Songs of Tagore
William Radice

 

 
<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/r13n420g78365tq0/?p=7e94180da62b4f
ee8b7c73dfc1f14c0b&pi=10> The Art Song and Tagore: Settings by Western
Composers
Suddhaseel Sen

 

 
<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/a01671htv4651174/?p=7e94180da62b4f
ee8b7c73dfc1f14c0b&pi=11> Literary Assessments of Tagore by Bengali Muslim
Writers
Mahmud Shah Qureshi

 

University of Toronto Quarterly

Acclaimed as one of the finest journals focused on the humanities,
University of Toronto Quarterly is filled with serious, probing, and
vigorously researched articles spanning a wide range of subjects in the
humanities. Often the best insights in one field of knowledge come through
cross-fertilization, where authors can apply another discipline's ideas,
concepts, and paradigms to their own disciplines. UTQ is not a journal where
one philosopher speaks to another, but a place where a philosopher can speak
to specialists and general readers in many other fields. This
interdisciplinary approach provides a depth and quality to the journal that
attracts both general readers and specialists from across the humanities.

 

Discover Canada's best-kept literary secret!

Since 1936, University of Toronto Quarterly has devoted an entire issue to
Letters in Canada. This annual winter issue of UTQ offers probing
evaluations of work by Canadian scholars and by international scholars on
Canadian issues. Not restricted by language, reviews include coverage of the
year's creative work by both established and emerging writers in poetry,
fiction, drama, and translation, in both English and French. In recent
years, the Letters in Canada issue has encompassed over 650 pages and
featured the work of more than 200 reviewers, whose informed and thoughtful
reviews provide an extensive record of current research in the humanities in
Canada. The coverage is complemented with notice of work published
internationally on Canadian literature, history, politics, culture, and the
arts.

 

University of Toronto Quarterly

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Access the issue online at http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/120331/

 

posted by T Hawkins, University of Toronto Press - Journals