Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European to win a Nobel Prize for Literature. He has been called one of the outstanding thinkers of the 20th century and the greatest poet India has ever produced. His Nobel followed publication of Gitanjali, his English version of some of his Bengali poems. WB Yeats and Ezra Pound were great supporters. Tagore was born in Calcutta in 1861 and educated partly in Britain; King George V knighted him, but Tagore renounced this in 1919 following the Amritsar Massacre. A key figure in Indian nationalism, Tagore became a friend of Gandhi, offering criticism as well as support. A polymath and progressive, Tagore painted, wrote plays, novels, short stories and many songs. The national anthems of India and Bangladesh are based on his poems.
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Guests
- Chandrika Kaul
5 episodes
Lecturer in Modern History at the University of St Andrews -
Bashabi Fraser No other episodes
Professor of English Literature and Creative Writing at Edinburgh Napier University -
John Stevens No other episodes
Leverhulme Postdoctoral Fellow at SOAS, University of London
Reading list
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Rabindranath Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man
Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson (I.B.Tauris, first published 1995; 2008) Google Books → -
A Meeting of Two Minds: Geddes-Tagore Letters
Bashabi Fraser (Word Power Books, 2005) Google Books → -
Rabindranath Tagore: A Biography
Krishna Kripalani (UBS Publishers' Distributors Ltd, 2008) Google Books → -
Return from Exile
Ashis Nandy (Oxford University Press, first published 1999; 2004) Google Books → -
Gitanjali
Rabindranath Tagore (trans. William Radice) (Penguin Books, first published 1910; 2011) Google Books → -
Gora
Rabindranath Tagore (Sahitya Akademi, first published 1910; 2003) Google Books → -
I Won't Let You Go: Selected Poems
Rabindranath Tagore (trans. Ketaki Kushari Dyson) (Bloodaxe Books Ltd, first published 1992; 2010) Google Books → -
Nationalism
Rabindranath Tagore (Penguin Classics, first published 1917; 2010) Google Books → -
Selected Poems
Rabindranath Tagore (trans. William Radice) (Penguin, 2005) Google Books → -
Selected Short Stories
Rabindranath Tagore (trans. William Radice) (Penguin, 2005) Google Books → -
The Golden Boat: Selected Poems
Rabindranath Tagore (trans. Joe Winter) (Anvil Press Poetry, first published 1894; 2008) Google Books → -
The Home and the World
Rabindranath Tagore (Penguin Classics, first published 1916; 2005) Google Books → -
The Post Office
Rabindranath Tagore (Kessinger Publishing, first published 1912; 2010) Google Books → -
The Religion of Man
Rabindranath Tagore (Martino Fine Books, first published 1930; 2013) Google Books → -
My Life in My Words
Rabindranath Tagore (ed. Uma Das Gupta) (Penguin, first published 2006; 2010) Google Books →
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Programme ID: b05sxv7b
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05sxv7b
Auto-category: 891.441 (Bengali poetry)
Hello (First sentence from this episode)
Hello. It's claimed that Rabindranath Tagore was at one time one of the most famous poets in the world.