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Anti-Colonial Metrics: Homeric Time in an Indian Prison, ca. 1909
- ELH
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 81, Number 3, Fall 2014
- pp. 1029-1053
- 10.1353/elh.2014.0037
- Article
- Additional Information
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Recent scholarship on Victorian poetry has drawn attention to the social meanings of meter, especially as a symbol of English national culture. This essay looks at the significance of AurobindoGhose (1872-1950) [Sri Aurobindo] within English metrical history. Ghose was a revolutionary for Indian self-rule and modern guru who began a Homeric epic in hexameters whilst in prison. By situating his creative and critical writings within nineteenth and early twentieth century debates on meter, I elaborate an aesthetic dimension of his assertively cosmopolitan and nonsecular politics. His generally overlooked case points towards a history that takes into greater account the contrapuntal metrics of colony and metropole.