Dynamics of the image a study of Sujata Bhatts poetry

Abstract

The thesis grapples with the dynamics of the image in the poetry of Sujata Bhatt, one of the significant contemporary poets. Examining the modalities through which an image concretizes an idea, the project, engages with the gamut of poetic images, from the works of Sujata Bhatt. The first chapter outlines the alterations in cultural paradigm and the subsequent transformations in the idiom of poetry in Indian English poetic tradition. Further, it attempts to place Bhatt s poetic idiom in relation to the tradition. The second chapter revolves around various aspects of gender. It investigates images that explore the questions of inter-relationality, corporeality, and gendered space. The third chapter examines the figurations of poetic idiom that articulate cultural memory, through the embodiment of cultural narratives as well as practices, ultimately culminating in the question of cultural identity. Grappling with the select poems of Sujata Bhatt that have come in response to the works of Paula Rego, Paula Modersohn-Becker, and Frida Kahlo, the fourth chapter looks at the interaction of the visual and the verbal. It tries to address this question of intermediality by taking recourse to the resources from Indian reflective traditions bringing forth the implications of the concepts of rasa and dhvani. The final chapter attempts to restate the thesis statement regarding the agency of image. newline