Inveterate Walkers, Literary Minds

Bengal's Pilgrims and Their Himalayan Journeys
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-75120-7
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd (Sales)

Buch, Englisch, 198 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 435 g

Reihe: Routledge Research in Travel Writing

Inveterate Walkers, Literary Minds: Bengal’s Pilgrims and Their Himalayan Journeys brings under its critical focus the writings of Bengal’s travellers (mostly pilgrims) who went, on foot, into Himalayan trails from the mid-nineteenth to the early and mid-twentieth century. Unlike many European travellers and climbers in the age of empire, who saw the mountain as an obstacle overcoming which was a matter of individual and national pride, these modest walkers, unkempt and raddled in their meagre ways of travel, produced a discourse of surrender in their intimate and reflecting engagement with the mountains. The book examines the writings of Jadunath Sharbadhikary, the first among Bengal’s pilgrims whose Himalayan travels were published as a book and the more popular writers including Jaladhar Sen, Umaprasad Mukhopadhyay and Abadhut. It also traces emergent selfhoods and complex subjectivities of women travellers in particular, such as Ratnamala Devi, Rani Chanda and Nabaneeta Deb Sen whose accounts reveal both guarded, hesitant voices and self-assured, confident enunciation of the self.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Biswas, Anandarup

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturen sonstiger Sprachräume Indische & Dravidische Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Strömungen & Epochen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Foreword by Bill Ashcroft                 

Preface                                                           

Acknowledgements                           

Introduction                                       

Chapter 1: Early Pilgrims: Emergence of the Self-absorbed Walker                        

Chapter 2: The Urge to Surrender: Spiritualising and Aestheticising the Himalaya 

Chapter 3: The Woman Traveller as Writer: Forging Selfhoods Through Himalayan Journeys

Works cited                                        

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Anandarup Biswas is an Associate Professor in English literary studies at Shibpur Dinobundhoo College, affiliated with the University of Calcutta. He is also a guest faculty in the Department of English, Presidency University, Kolkata. His doctoral research on the Australian writer Eric Rolls falls under the domain of environmental humanities. His essay titled Bengal’s Encounter with the Himalaya: Mountaineering Beyond Conquest” has found a place in the anthology, The Mountain and the Politics of Representation, edited by Jenny and Martin Hall (2023). He has also published essays on environmental humanities, travel writing and Sherpa autobiographies.