Bengali novels occupy a major part of Bengali literature. Though the first Bengali novel was "Karuna O Phulmonir Bibaran(1852)", the Bengali novel actually started its journey with Durgeshnondini written by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay in 1865. According to Ananda Sanker and Lila Ray, 'when the novel was introduced in Bengali in the middle of the 19th century, the form itself was new, the prose in which it was written was new, the secular tone was new in a country hitherto wholly dominated by religion, and the society in which and for which it was written was new’ (Page 168). But some great novelists like Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Rabindranath Tagore, Manik Bandopadhyay, Tarashankar Bandopadhyay, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay developed the newly introduced genre in such a way that ‘new’ changed into ‘matured’ through their works. Almost all these literary activities went on in full swing in Kolkata. Dhaka, on the other hand, could not participate in the early stage but literature created by and of the people of Bangladesh area later on flourished with notable success.
Read more about Bengali Novels: Bangladeshi Novels, Novels of West Bengal, India, Further Reading
Famous quotes containing the word novels:
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)