Sita beyond the epic: A mythological reinterpretation of Nabaneeta Dev Sen’s Sita theke Shuru

Abstract

This paper undertakes a mythological reading of Nabaneeta Dev Sen’s Sita theke Shuru, reinterpreting the Ramayana as a dynamic site of cultural renewal, symbolic inversion, and feminine re-creation. Moving beyond the feminist reclamation of Sita, this study situates Dev Sen’s work within the archetypal and mythopoeic dimensions of Indian narrative tradition. By revisiting the myth of Sita not merely as a gendered figure but as a mythic consciousness, Dev Sen reinvokes what Northrop Frye calls “the mythos of identity” a pattern through which societies continuously retell their own origins. Through symbolic acts of return, inversion, and transcendence, Sita theke Shuru converts the patriarchal myth of obedience into a myth of cyclical renewal, thereby bridging the sacred and the subversive. This mythological reading reveals how Dev Sen transforms the epic from a tale of dharmic submission to one of cosmic feminine autonomy.