Volume-XI, Issue-I, January 2025 |
Making Sense of Literary (Non) sense in Select Poems ofSukumar Ray’s Abol Tabol: A Close Reading Chinmoy Dey, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Basanti Devi College, Kolkata, West Bengal, India |
Received: 02.12.2024 | Accepted: 30.12.2024 | Published Online: 31.01.2025 | Page No: 73-79 | ||||
DOI: 10.29032/ijhsss.vol.11.issue.01W.009 | |||||||
ABSTRACT | ||
Nonsense is a medium through which the literary artist points out myriad shortcomings of the society she/he lives in. Literary nonsense is a genre that technically draws attention to and takes advantage of the arbitrary nature of language. Sukumar Ray's creative works need to be understood in the context of a literary and cultural milieu, which was a product of complex, heterogeneous socio-cultural and political forces. Intellectually indebted to Western traditions, Ray is likely to have been inspired by the mid-19th century works of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. By blending the eastern and the western tradition of literature and art, Sukumar composed the distinctly original poems of Abol Tabol (Nonsense Rhymes). The world of the child is one of unreason and irrationality, governed by neither laws nor logical limits. Children's literature, however, while celebrating the world of the improbable, is a product of the adult mind - a mind that simultaneously possesses both childlike whims and adult wisdom. Although primarily meant for children, Sukumar's nonsense, bearing a strong humorous and whimsical strain, is highly political. This paper seeks to demonstrate, through a close reading of some select poems from Abol Tabol, how Sukumar, via a unique melange of wit, humour and satire, underscores the necessity of (non)sense in a world marked by disturbing and maddening sense, where a certain amount of nonsensical unreason might just artistically restore the balance and equilibrium of a "civilised" society governed by the powers that be. Keywords: literary (non) sense, children's literature, Abol Tabol, whimsy, colonialism, Babu, hybridity. |