Michael Madhusudan Dutt’s The Captive Ladie: Text Context and Perspectives

Abstract

Michael Madhusudan Dutta (1824-1873) is a revered name in Bengali Literature. To gauge his merit is an arduous task. It is he who changed the literary sky of Bengali literature with grace and elan. He began writing English poetry at the age of seventeen and started sending his works to publications in England, including Blackwood’s Magazine and Bentley’s Miscellany. However, his desire to go to England and make a name in English literature became largely unfulfilled. He succumbed to familial pressure and was forced to leave Calcutta for Madras. In 1849 he composed The Captive Ladie a poem of two cantos. This paper is a fresh take on The Captive Ladie beyond the conventional, canonical critical approaches that usually estimate The Captive Ladie from social, and philosophical perspectives, the paper takes recourse to the cultural issues of India as a nation, language ‘differences’, identity politics, personal struggle.

Keywords

• english poetry
• bengali literature
• social, identity politics