One Romanticism, Many Voices: Nazrul’s Encounter with the English Romantics and the Shaping of a Global Romantic Tradition

This study undertakes a comparative analysis of the poems of Kazi Nazrul Islam and the works of major English Romantic poets— Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron, Keats— through the methods of influence studies and thematology to trace the influence the Romantics exerted on Nazrul and to discern the convergences and divergences in their treatment of various literary themes, with the additional aim of assessing Nazrul’s contribution to shaping, recalibrating and extending the limits of global Romanticism through the indigenization of Romantic tropes. The analysis engages with influence studies to delineate how colonial education informed the contour of Bengali literary canon while it employs a thematological framework to trace the affinities and the divergences between the Romantics and Nazrul with respect to their treatment of various literary themes— nature, rebellion, and romantic love, to name a few. The evidence suggests that while the Romantics revolt against any authoritarian entity, Nazrul is predominantly an anti-colonialist— an ‘intrepid nationalist’ forever eager to ‘overthrow the British Raj’ (Chowdhury, 2000). Moreover, albeit he adores and immerses himself in the wealth of beauty nature offers, he diverges significantly from the recurring tendency among the Romantics to portray nature as a healing, regulating, instructing God-like entity. These findings, along with others, elevate his status as a Romantic who has introduced innovations within the pantheon of global romanticisms and reinforce the rationale for adopting Comparative Literature’s frameworks to examine cross-cultural exchanges. Undoubtedly, the analysis attests to the potentiality of literature to foster intercultural dialogue, thereby inspiring further research to demonstrate Romanticism’s diverse manifestations across the globe. Spectrum, Volume 19, June 2024: 68-82