The Cosmopolitan Nationalism of Sarojini Naidu, Nightingale of India
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12411611 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sheshalatha Reddy (University of Mary Washington, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2010 |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 571-589 |
| Publication date | 2010-05-06 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Victorian Literature and Culture (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1060-1503 • E-ISSN: 1470-1553 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s1060150310000173 |
| OpenAlex | W2126204921 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 12 |
Sarojini Naidu (1879–1949), the English -language Indian poetess and politician, appears before the viewer in the frontispieces to her first two collections of poetry, The Golden Threshold (1905) and The Bird of Time: Songs of Life, Death and the Spring (1912). She presents herself in print, as in her oratory, as both a figure of nineteenth-century verse culture and a cosmopolitan nationalist. The Golden Threshold includes a now well-known introduction by Arthur Symons and a sketch of a young Naidu by J. B. Yeats (father of W. B. Yeats). [See Figure 1.] Arrayed in a voluminous and ruffled white dress, distinctly “Western” in style, with hands clasped together, Naidu's youthful yet grave face stares directly at the viewer. She appears here as a precocious, prepubescent Victorian poetess captured within a private setting. Yet when this volume was published in 1905, the picture, drawn during Naidu's sojourn in England in the mid-1890s when much of the poetry included in the collection was composed, must have been almost a decade old. The only sign of racial difference in the sketch is her lightly shaded skin and dark hair. The blurred sketch echoes Naidu's own ambiguous position at this time: she is neither wholly Indian nor wholly English, and she navigates uneasily between the roles of naïve student of poetry and accomplished poetess
Art · Art history · Cosmopolitanism · Face (sociological concept · Linguistics · Literature · Nationalism · Poetry · Sketch · Style (visual arts · Computer Science · History · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · South Asian Cinema and Culture · South Asian Studies and Diaspora
| Citations per year | 0.6 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2021 - 2026 (6) |
| Highly cited | No |