68 SOCIAL SCIENTIST In this assessment, the history of Bengali literature in the nineteenth century became an expression of the "revolution" that was taking place in all spheres of life due to contact with the West. It is true, however, that Sushil Kumar grounded his study thoroughly within the socio-historical context of nineteenth-century Bengal and gave exhaustive accounts of the various institutions that flourished at that time. But his understanding proceeded from the basic premise that "individualism" and its 'expressions are absent in pro-modem Bengali literature, and that literature can exist for its own sake. His canon, therefore, will evolve on these assumptions. The^onclusion to be drawn from the above inquiry is the necessity to be alert as readers and as writers to the ideological underpinnings of the term "literary." The construction of any narrative, particularly a narrative or history of literature involves, among other things, a theoretical configuration that dictates our deployment of the term "literary." Which are the texts that we would consider "literary" and why? Who determines these criteria and how are these constituted? What happens when there is apower-relationship at work as in the colonial situation? How do historians succumb to the hegemony of the universalist assumptions of English literary judgments of the preceding century? Perhaps it is time now for us to consciously deconstruct our assumptions regarding the term "literature" and examine the canon that we have inherited. We should be aware of the exact semantic content or connotations of the term and find out how it includes or excludes texts that do not fit its parameters. In other words, one has to be aware of the ideological agenda behind the construction of any canon or counter-canon, and only then will we be aware of our exact intellectual position in the world of ideas, BIBLIOGRAHY Basu,Rajnarayan. IW.BanglaBhasaoSahityaBisayakaBaktrta. Calcutta: Granthan. (First ed. 1878) Bhattachaiya, Amitrasudan. 1975. Unabingsa ^atake BSngIa Sahityetih3sa Carca. Calcutta: Sarasvat Library. Bhadia, Gautam. 1994. "Itihase smrtite itihasa." Visva Bharati PatrikS, Srabon-Aswin 1401. Chatterjee, Bankimchandra. 1871. "Bengali literature." The Calcutta Review. Dasgupta, Harendramohan. 1935. Studies in Western Influence on Nineteenth Century Bengali Poetry 1857-1887. Calcutta: Chakravarty, Chatterjee and Co. Ltd. De, Sushil Kumar. 1962. Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century 1757-1857. Second revised edition. Calcutta: Firma K.L. Mukhopadhyaya. (First ed. 1919) Dimock, Edward C. et al. 1974. The Literatures of India: An Introduction. Chicago: U. of Chicago Press. Kermode, Frank. 1979. "Institutional Control of Interpretation/' Salmagundi 43 (Winter). Nagendra. 1987. A Dictionary of Sanskrit Poetics. Delhi: B.R. Publishing Corp. Nelson, Cary. 1993. "Facts Have No Meaning: Writing Literary History in the Shadow of Poststructuralism." College Literature 20 (2). Ramanujan, A. K. "Indian Poetics." In Dimock ed. 1974. Sen, Dineshchandra. 1896. BangabhQsa o Sahitya: Ingreja Prabhabera Purba Parjanta. Fifth ed. Calcutta: Guiudas Chattopadhyaya and Sons.