Burning women : widows, witches, and early modern European travelers in India / Pompa Banerjee.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Banerjee, Pompa, 1957-

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Series:

Early modern cultural studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sati--India.

Sati.

Widow suicide--India.

Widow suicide.

Women--India--Social conditions--History.

Women.

Europeans.

History.

Travelers.

Social conditions.

India--Description and travel--History.

India.

Travelers--India--History.

Europeans--India--History.

Physical Description:

xviii, 278 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

Summary:

In early modern Europe, the circulation of visual and verbal transmissions of sati, or Hindu widowburning, not only informed responses to the ritualized violence of Hindu culture, but also intersected in fascinating ways with specifically European forms of ritualized violence and European constructions of gender ideology. European accounts of women being burned in India uncannily commented on the burnings of women as witches and criminal wives in Europe. When Europeans narrated their accounts of sati, perhaps the most striking illustration of Hindu patriarchal violence, they did not specifically connect the act of widowburning to a corresponding European signifier: the gruesome ceremonial burnings of women as witches. In inferring a history from silenced voices and highlighting the exchanges and synchronic ideological spaces between Hindu widows and European witches, widows, and wives, this book takes into account the cross-cultural potential of these early engagements.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [255]-267) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

1403960186

OCLC:

49672527