The Making of Bengali Literary Prose : Vidyasagar’s Thought on Style and Structure/ বাংলা সাহিত্যিক গদ্যের হয়ে ওঠা : বিদ্যাসাগরের গদ্যশৈলী এবং আখ্যান ভাবনা

Abstract

19^th century Kolkata plays an important role in socio-cultural history of Bengal. It is the period of shift in the paradigm towards the Kolkata based urban colonialism. It is in this time that the first printing press was established in Srirampore, Hooghly. Immediately after this the Fort William College was also established. The college taught vernacular language to the workers of the East India Company. The pandits of Fort William College made a significant contribution in development of Bengali prose in early days.

           Vidyasagar as a writer of Bengali Prose can’t be placed after the pandits of Fort William College and the critical prose of Raja Rammohan Roy. The present paper mainly Focus on Vidyasagar’s two translation – ‘Shakuntala’ and ‘Sitar Banabas’. It has to be Keep in mind that Vidyasagar is not the firstprose writer in Bengali but it is he who unfettered the Bengali Prose from the influences Sanskrit and English and at the same time made it structurally independent.

           The next part of the article deals with the structural aspect of Vidyasagar’s prose. We all know that love for story telling is one of the oldest characteristics of Indian literature. Every primary epic or a medieval poetry has a particular storyline. ‘Shakuntala’ and ‘Sitar Banabas’ are based on Indian mythology but Vidyasagar changed the storyline of both these texts on order to make it relevant in the period of early Bengal Renaissance to what the paper aims to highlight. The inner conflict of both the stories can be a prelude to the Bengali novel is what the main paper also Focus upon.