Fantasy and the Politics of Subversion

Speculative Writing in Colonial India

Focusing on the corpus of Fantasy texts written in colonial India during the late 19th and early 20th century, this book explores the origins, motivations, nature and role of speculative writing around the period of the Indian independence movement.

Taking stock of Bengali texts previously designated as children’s literature, Mayurika Chakravorty examines the works of such authors as Sanjibchandra Chattopadhyay, Trailokyanath Mukhopadhyay, Sukumar Ray and Parashuram (Rajshekhar Basu) and Sukumar Ray to shed light on how their writing offered stringent commentaries on the colonial situation whilst grappling with larger questions surrounding science, progress, the environment, ethics and morality. With a focus on how key works – previously omitted from the established canon of fantasy literature – were based on diverse classical streams from European, Persian, classical Sanskrit and local folk traditions, the book explores how speculative writers challenged the dominant literary tropes of both colonial (Western) and revivalist (Sanskrit) classicism.

In highlighting overlooked writing within Indian literary history and fantasy and children’s literature studies, Chakravorty demonstrates that in understanding these works in relation to one another, they provide evidence of compelling bodies of work produced in the context of, and in resistance to, empire.

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