A Garden in Words: Toru Dutt
A poet who painted India in English — and the thread that ties this whole unit together
Canvas of Soil is by a contemporary poet, Maya Anthony — a modern voice writing about gardens as living art. But the sonnet Kaveri pairs it with comes from one of the most remarkable figures in all of Indian English literature, Toru Dutt — who 'painted' an Indian garden in English a century and a half ago, and died at just twenty-one.
Indians writing India in English — from 1877 to now
Toru Dutt was a pioneer. In the 1870s, the idea of an Indian woman writing serious poetry in English — and being read in England — was almost unheard of. She helped begin a tradition that runs straight through to the writers in this very textbook: Sudha Murty, Temsula Ao, and the anonymous and contemporary poets whose work you've read. When you read Canvas of Soil and Toru Dutt's sonnet side by side, you are seeing 150 years of Indians claiming English as a language to write India in — its gardens, its crafts, its villages, its voices.
The whole unit in one thread
Step back and see what Unit 3 has been doing. Four texts, one question — what is art and craft, really?
Q1.Who was Toru Dutt?
Canvas of Soil is by a contemporary poet, Maya Anthony — a modern voice writing about gardens as living art. But the sonnet Kaveri pairs it with comes from one of the most remarkable figures in all of Indian English literature, Toru Dutt — who 'painted' an Indian garden in English a century and a half ago, and died at just twenty-one.
Indians writing India in English — from 1877 to now
Toru Dutt was a pioneer. In the 1870s, the idea of an Indian woman writing serious poetry in English — and being read in England — was almost unheard of. She helped begin a tradition that runs straight through to the writers in this very textbook: Sudha Murty, Temsula Ao, and the anonymous and contemporary poets whose work you've read. When you read Canvas of Soil and Toru Dutt's sonnet side by side, you are seeing 150 years of Indians claiming English as a language to write India in — its gardens, its crafts, its villages, its voices.
The whole unit in one thread
Step back and see what Unit 3 has been doing. Four texts, one question — what is art and craft, really?
Q1.Who was Toru Dutt?