Karuna Rahman, Corpus Christi
Course: English
Supervisor: Dr Jenny Wallace
Dissertation Title: Romantic Intersections: Orientalism and Cross-Cultural Influences in British and Colonial Bengali Poetry
Biographical Information
I read Philosophy and English Literature at the University of Edinburgh, which led me to pursue an MA in Comparative Literature at University College London. My current doctoral project at Cambridge is supervised by Dr Jennifer Wallace, focusing on Romantic Orientalism and its connections with the Bengal Region during the colonial period.
Research Interests
My PhD examines how the poetry of British Romantic writers, such as those of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Irish writer Thomas Moore, were configured by the Oriental texts they encountered, and how their Romantic productions consequently shaped Bengali literature in the poetry of Henry Derozio and Michael Madhusudan Datta, who wrote in both English and Bengali. The connection is doubly compelling as it showcases the impact of Orientalist works on Oriental writers, as well as investigates how Hellenism permeated Bengali poetry through Derozio and Dutt’s deep love for classical literature, contrasting Hellenism that occurs in Romanticism.
