The ten chapters collected in this book manifest the current global interest in trans-border dialogues and trace the origins and development of Italian and Bengali internationalisms in the period from the mid-19th to the early 20th century. Despite having differing political statuses and lacking a shared geographical or historical space, Bengal and Italy remained uniquely connected and, at times, actively sought to transcend different kinds of constraints in their search for a significant dialogue and mutual enrichment in the fields of literature, music, architecture, art, cinema, diplomacy, entrepreneurship, travels, education and intellectual engagement. In this context, the volume confronts strategies of evaluation adopted by prominent representatives of the Bengali and Italian cultural environments with particular emphasis on readings embedded in the moment of contact. Both regions benefitted from this ‘elective affinity’ as they advanced along their respective paths towards a fuller awareness of their specific identity, and thus set a positive example of transcultural understanding which may inspire today’s world.
Paromita Chakravarti is Professor, Department of English, and has been the Director of the School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. She completed her doctoral studies at the University of Oxford, UK. She teaches Renaissance drama, women’s writing, sexuality and film studies. Her work in the School of Women’s Studies has focused on education and sexuality. Her edited book is Women Contesting Culture: Changing Frames of Gender Politics in India (2012) and co-edited books are Shakespeare and Indian Cinemas: ‘Shakespeare and Indian Cinemas’ (2018) and Asian Interventions in Global Shakespeare: ‘All the World’s His Stage’ (2021).
Mario Prayer is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History of India at Sapienza University of Rome. His research interests focus on the political and cultural history of 20th-century Bengal, Indo-Italian relations in the inter-war period, Mahatma Gandhi’s reconstruction movement and the Panchayats in West Bengal. He is the author of The ‘Gandhians’ of Bengal: Nationalism, Social Reconstruction and Cultural Orientations 1920–1942 (2001) and has translated works by Rabindranath Tagore and Manik Bandopadhyay from the original Bengali into Italian.
