| ID | 121950 |
| Title Proper | Periodical readership in early twentieth century Bengal |
| Other Title Information | Ramananda Chattopadhyay's Prabasi |
| Language | ENG |
| Author | Mitra, Samarpita |
| Publication | 2013. |
| Summary / Abstract (Note) | This paper investigates some key questions regarding the socio-cultural implications of a relatively understudied print media, the literary miscellany, its production and consumption in early twentieth century British Bengal. Through a study of Ramananda Chattopadhyay's Prabasi, a major literary journal that set the trend of sacitra masik patrika or illustrated monthly magazine in Ba?gla, its literary innovations and editorial interventions, this paper explores how periodical reading and the notions of aesthetics and culture that it cultivated became intimately tied up with questions of middle class identity and class differentiation. It shows how this pioneering sacitra patrika came to command a literary and visual space that, by the time of the Swadeshi years, was conceived as co-extensive with the future sovereign nation. Problematizing notions of a quotidian practice like leisure-reading that had become integral to the lifestyles of an expanding middle class, this study shows how Prabasi not only lent new meanings to ideas of sustained interest and participation in public life amongst its readers, but that it also represented a self-consciously, high-brow cultural sensitivity that the Bengali bhadralok were to claim and safeguard as their own. |
| `In' analytical Note | Modern Asian Studies Vol. 47, No.1; Jan 2013: p.204-249 |
| Journal Source | Modern Asian Studies Vol. 47, No.1; Jan 2013: p.204-249 |
| Key Words | Socio - Cultural Implications ; Ramananda Chattopadhyay's Prabasi ; Sacitra Masik Patrika ; Middle Class Identity ; Bengal |