A Study of Henry Derozio as an Anti-Colonial Poet
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.58213/vidhyayana.v7i5.863Abstract
India was colonised for more than one hundred and fifty years. One of the prominent responses, during this time, was in the form of writing and that, too, in the language of the coloniser. In the last two-three decades, the contemporary studies of the postcolonial criticism have interest in studying the social identities authored and authorized by the colonised or the colonialism. Inspired from this interest, the paper tries to study Henry Derozio, a poet of the first quatre of the 19th century, famously known as Indian Keats, India’s first national, modern poet as an anti-colonial poet. His poetry focused in the paper includes ‘Fakeer of Jungheera’, his chef-d’oeuvre, and poetry on women emancipation and nationalistic sonnets which set a tone for the rest to follow.
Despite being a progeny of a mixed parentage with an English first name and a Portuguese surname: Henry Louis Vivian Derozio (1809-1831), the Eurasian poet was highly passionate about India and considered it as his motherland. He wrote numerous poems with patriotic zeal and nationalistic reformation. He is credited for the inception of Indian Poetry in English with his ‘Sonnet to Night’ published in India Gazette in 1822.
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