India’s Forests, Real and Imagined: Writing the Modern Nation

Description

As they seek to explore evolving and conflicting ideas of nationhood and modernity, India’s writers have often chosen forests as the dramatic setting for stories of national identity. India’s Forests, Real and Imagined explores how these settings have been integral to India’s sense of national consciousness. Alan Johnson demonstrates that modern writers have drawn on older Indian literary traditions of the forest as a place of exile, trial and danger to shape new ideas of India as a modern nation. The book casts new light on a wide range of modern writers, from Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay – widely regarded as the first Indian novelist – to contemporary authors such as Amitav Ghosh, Arundhati Roy, and Salman Rushdie as well as local attitudes to nationhood and the environment across the country. Cover Half Title Title Copyright Contents Figures Acknowledgments Introduction: Imagining India’s Forests 1 Moral Kingship, Forest Dwellers, and Epic and Vernacular Forests 2 Colonial History, Home Forests, and Mother India in Bankim’s Anandamath 3 Premchand’s Forest, Bibhutibhushan’s Aranyak, and the Progressive Era 4 History, Nation, and Forest in Salman Rushdie and Amitav Ghosh 5 Indigeneity, Forestry, and the State in C. K. Janu, Mahasweta Devi, and Easterine Kire Conclusion: The City in the Forest Notes Introduction: Imagining India’s Forests 1 Moral Kingship, Forest Dwellers, and Epic and Vernacular Forests 2 Colonial History, Home Forests, and Mother India in Bankim’s Anandamath 3 Premchand’s Forest, Bibhutibhushan’s Aranyak, and the Progressive Era 4 History, Nation, and Forest in Salman Rushdie and Amitav Ghosh 5 Indigeneity, Forestry, and the State in C. K. Janu, Mahasweta Devi, and Easterine Kire Conclusion: The City in the Forest Bibliography Index