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Work #1571 · Middle

Gora

Rabindranath Tagore
1907-09 serialised; 1910 publication · Bengali
Novel · Bengali Renaissance literature / Indian nationalism debate / Brahmo-Samaj

Tagore's 1910 novel 'Gora' — Hindu orthodoxy, Brahmo reform, and the discovery of universal humanity

Attribute Fingerprint

Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.

Attribute Gora (Middle)
Time · Extent Infinite
Time · Ontological Status Relational
Time · Grain Continuous
Time · Freedom Non-Deterministic
Time · Traversability Linear
Time · Dimensionality One
Time · Direction Uni-directional
Space · Extent Infinite
Space · Ontological Status Relational
Space · Curvature Flat
Space · Dimensionality Three
Space · Locality Local
Matter · Extent Infinite
Matter · Ontological Status Emergent
Matter · Conservation Conserved
Matter · Dimensionality Three
Matter · Locality Local
Observer · Time Instance Single
Observer · Space Instance Single
Observer · Knowledge Extent Immediate
Observer · Knowledge Retainment Total
Observer · Physicality Both
Observer · Agency Active
Observer · Number Plural
Observer · Metaphysical Agency Personal
Observer · Moral Authority Revelation
Observer · Theological Method
Energy · Extent Infinite
Energy · Ontological Status Emergent
Energy · Conservation Conserved
Energy · Dispersibility Reversible
Information · Ontological Status Relational
Information · Cosmic Conservation Conserved
Information · Personal Conservation Conserved
Information · Granularity Continuous

Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence

What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.

Time

Gora

1907-09 serialisation; 1910 book publication. The novel's narrative time is set in the 1880s — the heyday of late-nineteenth-century Bengali religious-political ferment.

Space

Gora

Bengal — Calcutta and surrounding districts. The geographical-cultural space is the bhadralok (cultured-Bengali-Hindu) milieu within which Brahmo-Samaj reform, Hindu orthodoxy, and early Indian nationalism contested.

Matter

Gora

Long novel (~600+ pages in modern editions). Form is third-person realist novel with extensive philosophical-political dialogue.

Observer

Gora

Middle Tagore. The observer-novelist is the Bengali-Brahmo poet-novelist whose father Debendranath was a Brahmo-Samaj leader and whose grandfather Dwarkanath had been a famous Calcutta entrepreneur; the family-position informs Tagore's outsider-insider relation to both Brahmo and orthodox Hindu communities.

Energy

Gora

Novelistic-philosophical energies. The novel combines the realist-social novel of late-nineteenth-century Europe (Tagore knew Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, George Eliot intimately) with the philosophical-religious thematics of Bengali religious-cultural debate.

Information

Gora

Single long novel. The novel's climactic discovery — Gora's Irish parentage — has structural-thematic force: orthodox identity is shown to rest on an ignorance of origin that the novel deliberately dissolves.

Internal Tensions

Where each work's argument pulls against itself.

Gora

Tagore's most philosophically-ambitious novel — universal humanism against narrowly-confessional identity. Continuously read in South Asian literary studies; treated by Ashis Nandy and other post-colonial scholars as a major Bengali-philosophical novel; the inter-religious thematics anticipate the post-1947 partition crisis Tagore would not live to see.