hungryalism · noun — an experimental movement in arts and literature in West Bengal, India, during the period 1961-1965, claiming that India was in the grip of sarvagrass, meaning that its culture fed on all the morsels available to it from all over the world. It carries an Arena rating of 1310, earned across 5 head-to-head judged battles.
Definition from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, hungryalism ranks #872 of 17,153 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound, #1,527 of 17,177 for Most Whimsical Words, #1,685 of 17,146 for Most Storied Words, #2,345 of 17,130 for Most Ponderous Words.
Why “hungryalism” is a great word
An experimental literary and artistic movement in West Bengal, India (1961–1965), characterized by a radical rejection of prevailing genres and a claim that Indian culture voraciously consumes influences from across the world. From the English word 'hungry', as used by Geoffrey Chaucer in the phrase 'in the sowre hungry tyme', combined with the suffix -alism, indicating a movement or doctrine; coined in the early 1960s by the Hungryalist poets, including Malay Roychoudhury. Unlike Modernism, a broad international pursuit of formal innovation, or Surrealism, with its disciplined techniques for plumbing the unconscious, Hungryalism was a specific, anarchic revolt against the Bengali literary establishment, declaring a doctrine of cultural hunger. It was the manifesto mimeographed on stolen paper, the raw nerve of a poem read aloud in a crowded tea-shop, and the defiant belief that a culture, to remain alive, must digest the entire world—a brief, fierce metabolism of art against the slow starches of tradition.
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Etymology
The word was derived from Geoffrey Chaucer's line "In The Sowre Hungry Tyme".
noun
- An experimental movement in arts and literature in West Bengal, India, during the period 1961-1965, claiming that India was in the grip of sarvagrass, meaning that its culture fed on all the morsels available to it from all over the world.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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