Sarojini Naidu: The nightingale as nationalist

Journal of Commonwealth Literature

Volumn 31, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 45-62

  Marx, Edward ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60950542651     PISSN: 00219894     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/002198949603100104     Document Type: Review

References (26)

1. "Another Hindoo Poet", New Republic, 9 (30 Dec. 1916), 247-8
2. Concise Cambridge History of English Literature, ed. George Sampson, Cambridge: Cambridge UP; New York: Macmillan, 1941, p. 914
3. M. K. Naik, Perspectives on Indian Poetry in English, New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1984, p. 215
4. "Sunalini: A Passage from her Life", unpublished ms. India Office Library, pp. 3-4. Quoted by permission. Despite the fictionalized name, the piece is clearly autobiographical
5. Arthur Symons, "Introduction" to Sarojini Naidu, The Golden Threshold, New York: John Lane; London: W. Heinemann, 1905, p. 11
6. A. N. Dwivedi, Sarojini Naidu and her Poetry, Allahabad: Kitab Mahal, 1981, p. 54
7. Edmund Gosse, "Introduction" to Sarojini Naidu, The Bird of Time: Songs of Life, Death and the Spring. New York: John Lane; London: William Heinemann, 1912, p. 4
8. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, London and New York: Routledge, 1994, p. 86
9. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures, London and New York: Routledge, 1989. p. 6. I am inclined, however, to think that the authors' emphasis on the complete, direct, and exclusive control of access to publication overstates the case for India at the turn of the century, where "native" printing presses did indeed need to be licensed, but nevertheless produced a substantial volume of "literature" which was merely supervised, rather than controlled, by representatives of the British Empire. Thus, Naidu's desire to be recognized as an English poet in England and by the English cannot be explained by "exclusive" British control of publication; I am arguing that it can be accounted for by a recognition of the particular status this form of literary recognition conferred on her, which bypassed the complicated access to literary status imposed on women in India, providing her with immediate and literary status transferable to the Indian scene
10. Arthur Symons, Mes Souvenirs, Chapelle-Reanville: The Hours Press, 1929, p. 33
11. Selected Letters, 1880-1935, eds. Karl Beckson and John M. Munro, Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1989, p. 233
12. John Munro, "The Poet and the Nightingale: Some Unpublished Letters from Sarojini Naidu to Arthur Symons," Calcutta Review, Sept. 1969, pp. 135-46
13. "Eastern Dancers," Savoy, 5 Sept. 1896
14. The Golden Threshold, p. 71
15. Saint Nihal Singh, "The Patriotic Songs and National Poems of India", Hindustan Review. 26 Dec. 1912, pp. 580-1
16. See Yone Noguchi, Collected English Letters, ed. Ikuko Atsumi, Tokyo: Yone Noguchi Society, 1975, p. 216
17. Rabindranath and the British Press, 1912-1941, eds. Kalyan Kundu, Sakti Bhattacharya and Kalyan Sircar, London: Tagore Centre. U.K.; Calcutta: Rupa and Co., 1990, p. 18
18. See Ezra Pound and Dorothy Shakespear: Their Letters, 1909-1914, ed. Omar Pound and A. Walton Litz, New York: New Directions, 1984. p. 264
19. Phiroze Edulji Dustoor, Sarojini Naidu, Mysore: Rao and Raghavan, 1961, pp. 3-4
20. James Cousins, The Renaissance in India, Madras: Ganesh and Co., 1918, p. 251
21. Meena Alexander, "Sarojini Naidu: 'Romanticism and Resistance' ", Ariel, 17 (Oct. 1986), 51
22. Partha Chatterjee, "The Nationalist Resolution to the Women's Question," Recasting Women, ed. Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1990, pp. 246-7
23. Rameshwar Gupta, Sarojini, the Poetess, Delhi: Doaba House, 1975, p. 14
24. Ranajit Guha, Subaltern Studies I: Writing on South Asian History and Society, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982, p. 1
25. Susie Tharu, "Tracing Savitri's Pedigree: Victorian Racism and the Image of Women in Indo-Anglian Literature," Recasting Women, ed. Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1990, p. 261
26. The Bird of Time, pp. 87-8