Nations Within and Without

The articulation of being and belonging in the context of the Indian nation, by seven post independence Indian English poets, is the central focus of the study. Every question about the nation is after all a question of identity, and since in the case of India the idea of a nation is a contested one, the story is very complex. The book includes a close reading of the poetry in English by Nissim Ezekiel, Jayanta Mahapatra, A. K. Ramanujan, R. Parthasarathy, Keki N. Daruwalla, Agha Shahid Ali and Sujata Bhatt. These seven poets combine to map India geographically, linguistically and culturally. By including both resident and expatriate poets, the study substantiates the claim implied in the title that nationalism is not contingent upon geography and residence alone. All the seven poets are heir to a multiplicity of traditions and have access to dual (if not multiple) resources of language, location and culture. Their creative expressions reflect this complexity. The four identity markers of Home, Land, Language and Culture have been used as the constituent elements to understand the individual and often overlapping experssions of identity by these poets.

Autorentext

Anjana Neira Dev is currently Associate Professor of English at Gargi College, University of Delhi, India. She has over two decades of experience teaching English Literature and Language and has written thirteen books on subjects as diverse as English for Special Purposes and Creative Writing, and articles in National and International Journals.