Ever since the sesquicentennial birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore in 2011, there has been a steady increase in scholarly publications on him from various perspectives and even a decade later, the trend is still continuing. Tagore practiced all the major literary genres—poetry, drama, fiction, and a range of non-fictional writings. In addition, he was a song-writer, composer, painter, philosopher, educationist, social thinker, and public intellectual. So critical surveys of the chief sectors of his artistic output and its reception are also quite a difficult task. The present volume under review takes on that challenge and along with studies of the historical and cultural background of Tagore’s time, it also includes some specialized studies on particular topics and fields of activity.
The essays in this anthology are primarily divided into two sections—‘Overviews’ and ‘Studies’. There are two excellent preliminary articles written originally in Bengali and aptly translated by Sukanta Chaudhuri. Professor Sankha Ghosh from Kolkata and Professor Anisuzzaman from Dhaka (both of whom unfortunately passed away recently) need no introduction for their excellence in Tagore scholarship.