Burning Women: Widows, Witches, and Early Modern European Travelers in India

by P. Banerjee

Overview

In early modern Europe, the circulation of visual and verbal transmissions of sati, or Hindu widow burning, 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 widow burning to a corresponding European signifier: the gruesome ceremonial burnings of women as witches. In examining early modern representations of sati, the book focuses specifically on those strategies that enabled European travellers to protect their own identity as uniquely civilized amidst spectacular displays of 'Eastern barbarity'.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781403960184
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	02/06/2003
Series:	Early Modern Cultural Studies 1500-1700
Edition description:	2003
Pages:	278
Sales rank:	737,797
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.03(d)

About the Author

POMPA BANERJEE is Assistant Professor of English at University of Colorado, Denver and author of a number of articles on east-west connections in the early modern period.

Table of Contents

Introduction Renaissance Crossings; Widows, Witches, and Forms of Literary Haunting Under Western Eyes: Sati and Witches in European Representations Instructions for Christian Women: The Sati and European Widows Disorderly Wives, Poison, and the Iconography of Female Murderers Civility and "dying" to Speak: the Sati, Fetish, and History

Editorial Reviews

'Overall this is an impressive book which synthesizes disparate narratives of discovery, morality, and gender differentiation to illuminate the role of women in early modern culture.' - Jyotsna Singh, Michigan State University

From the Publisher