About Book
The term ‘Renaissance’ has been used to refer to various
movements in cultural history—originally in Europe, and later, by
extension, to other civilizations. The Renaissance of fifteenth
and sixteenth-century Europe provides a model that has been
extended and modified to suit other periods and countries. In
particular, the term has been applied, not without
controversy, to the intensive social reform and cultural
development of nineteenth-century India, especially Bengal.
This book brings together articles by thirteen Italian and Indian
scholars on the European and Indian Renaissances. Each essay
addresses a specific aspect of one or both movements.
Between them, they cover the work of major writers in Europe
(Dante, Petrarch) and India (Bankim, Vidyasagar, Tagore);
cultural and socio-historic movements like humanism,
nationalism, the Reformation and Orientalism; and crucial social
sectors like the growth of the vernaculars, the changing status
of women and the pursuit of science. But more fundamentally,
all the essays address the larger issue of a ‘Renaissance’ as a
cultural paradigm valid for all times and all nations. Taken as a
whole, they make a notable contribution to the emerging
world-wide debate on the nature of a ‘Renaissance’ as a
universal cultural phenomenon.
About Author
Sukanta Chaudhuri is Professor Emeritus at Jadavpur University. His interests cover many fields: the European
Renaissance, Shakespeare and Early Modern English literature, textual studies, translation, Rabindranath Tagore,
and digital humanities. His monographs include Infirm Glory: Shakespeare and the Renaissance Image of Man,
Renaissance Pastoral and Its English Developments, Translation and Understanding and The Metaphysics of
Text. Chaudhuri has translated extensively from Bengali into English and has also translated Leonardo da Vinci’s
selected notebooks and Edward Lear’s limericks into Bengali. He was chief co-ordinator of the acclaimed
Bichitra project, an online database of the print and manuscript oeuvre of Rabindranath Tagore. He is co-editor
of Global Debates in the Digital Humanities (University of Minnesota Press, 2022). In 2021, he was elected
Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.