India's Forests, Real and Imagined - Writing the Modern Nation

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.>

About the author

Alan Johnson is Professor of English at Idaho State University, USA. He is the author of Out of Bounds: Anglo-Indian Literature and the Geography of Displacement (2001) and articles on topics ranging from environmental literature in India to Hindi film

Product details

• Authors: Alan Johnson
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 01.07.2024
• EAN: 9781350353923
• ISBN: 978-1-350-35392-3
• No. of pages: 280
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > Other languages / Other literatures; LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 20th Century, LITERARY CRITICISM / Asian / Indic, India, The environment, Science / Environmental Science, Literary studies: post-colonial literature, Literary studies: postcolonial literature, nationhood; identity; forests; environment