Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Literature and Plants
- The Cambridge Handbook of Literature and Plants
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Historical Periods
- Part II Anglophone Literary Forms
- Part III Global Regions
- Chapter 12 Plants in the French and Francophone Literary Tradition
- Chapter 13 Early American Plant Writing
- Chapter 14 Plants in the Literatures of Latin America and the Caribbean
- Chapter 15 Plants in the Literatures of Australia
- Chapter 16 Plants in the Literatures of Southern Africa
- Chapter 17 Lotus
- Chapter 18 Plants in the Literatures of India
- Chapter 19 Tree-Rings of Middle Eastern Poetry
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 18 - Plants in the Literatures of India
from Part III - Global Regions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 February 2025
- The Cambridge Handbook of Literature and Plants
- The Cambridge Handbook of Literature and Plants
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Historical Periods
- Part II Anglophone Literary Forms
- Part III Global Regions
- Chapter 12 Plants in the French and Francophone Literary Tradition
- Chapter 13 Early American Plant Writing
- Chapter 14 Plants in the Literatures of Latin America and the Caribbean
- Chapter 15 Plants in the Literatures of Australia
- Chapter 16 Plants in the Literatures of Southern Africa
- Chapter 17 Lotus
- Chapter 18 Plants in the Literatures of India
- Chapter 19 Tree-Rings of Middle Eastern Poetry
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Trees and plants have been venerated for centuries in India as cosmic providers of life and energy. In the modern periods, these sentiments have dominated literary and cultural works. In Toru Dutt’s poetry, we see a heartrending call to trees as fabricating nostalgia for family histories. From Jagadish Chandra Bose’s epoch-defining scientific discovery that plants have life to Rabindranath Tagore’s philosophical and ecological meditations on preserving forested life-systems, Indian writers in the twentieth century have paid respect to trees as meaningful antidote to expansive agricultural and industrial-based deforestation. In the late colonial and post-colonial contexts of aggressive material development and prophetic resistance in literature, plant-based prose work by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, Ismat Chughtai, or Bama, poetry of Gieve Patel or Mamang Dai, or experimental works by Sumana Roy or Kalpna Singh-Chitnis have variously offered significant imaginative mediums through which to reflect upon the complex and sacred dynamic of human–non-human relationship in India.
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- The Cambridge Handbook of Literature and Plants , pp. 343 - 361Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025