Translating the Religiosity and Gender Politics of Manasa Myth in Contemporary Bengali Theatrical Narrative
Until recently, folklore, like all other genres and disciplines, had a male-bias. A tendency to see the folkloric world in male terms as well as the sexist preconception about prevailing gender roles restricted the line of inquiry in case of folkloric fieldworks. Initially, the lack of feminist appr...
| Published in: | Nidān |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Univ.
2022
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| In: |
Nidān
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| Further subjects: | B
Ritual theatre
B Folklore B Alternative sexuality B Manasamangal B Divine possession |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | Until recently, folklore, like all other genres and disciplines, had a male-bias. A tendency to see the folkloric world in male terms as well as the sexist preconception about prevailing gender roles restricted the line of inquiry in case of folkloric fieldworks. Initially, the lack of feminist approach to the folklore and the folkloric representation of women characters, could be said to pervade the discipline with a conscious or unconscious gender bias. But the introduction of feminist theory into the study of folklore has opened new possibility for folkloric feminist scholarship to demonstrate how the analysis of women’s lore transformed folklore studies and why the feminist lens provided a different meaning to folklore that had the potential to disrupt patriarchal culture. The objective of the folkloric-feminist method offers a model for understanding social relations as gendered relationships of power. Though feminism has a political agenda and desire to change women’s position in society, this agenda expressed within mainstream folklore studies rarely connotes political action, but instead a methodological and theoretical intervention that in a compatible manner, yokes folklore studies and feminism together to reconstitute a new foundational base. Their conjoined efforts (i) validate and regenerate the socio-cultural life of women and to (ii) trace and highlight the forms of women’s symbolic expression that are concealed from or considered unimportant to mainstream culture. In this regard, Margaret Mill’s advocacy (1999) for the requisition of a performance-oriented, folkloric feminist women’s genre and its application, has been appreciated as it deconstructs previously unquestioned assumptions about authority, agency and power hierarchy. Contextualizing the above discussion, the present paper will show how the select Bengali play decodes the Manasa myth to create a new lore in the light of gender discourse and religiosity. |
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| ISSN: | 2414-8636 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Nidān
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.58125/nidan.2022.2 |