Category ToteM

FRENCH TRAVELLERS IN INDIA

Two decades after the first visit of Jean-Baptiste Tavernier and six years after François Bernier, a traveller named Jean de Thévenot arrived in Surat in 1666 during Aurangzeb’s reign.

MADNESS AFLOAT

Delightfully quirky and satirical, The Ship of Fools, a compilation of poems by the German humanist Sebastian Brant was publishedin 1494 from Basel. In it, Brant claimed to have documented the many kinds of madness or “foolishness” found among the men and women of his time.

John Donne shroud portrait, miniature portrait, and "Biathanatos" title page image photo collage

TO BE OR NOT TO BE

John Donne’s Biathanatos Doyeeta Majumdar “nothing that we call sin is so against nature, but that it may be sometimes agreeable to nature” Biathanatos, I.i.7 When Hamlet muses upon “a consummation devoutly to be wished” (III.i), suicide was considered a…

LAURA WRITES BACK

Extending the line from courtly love through the Tuscan dolce stil nuovo, Petrarchism redefined the position of women in European love poetry. Yet the more things changed, the more they remained the same. Petrarchism gave women a new inviolate space