Literary Debates

R.K. Kaul. Edited by Sarojini and Urmil Talwar

ISBN 10: 8170338727 / ISBN 13: 9788170338727

Published by Rawat, 2004

About this Item

Contents: R.K. Kaul: a biographical sketch. Preface. I. Ideas and movements: 1. The Anglo-Saxon view of future and fate: an essay in grammar and theology. 2. Donne and Webster: the air of reality. 3. Johnson and James as writers of travelogues. 4. Byron and the Burlesque tradition. 5. The Hellenism of Arnold and Nietzsche. 6. Henry James on the creative process. 7. Henry James as an art critic. 8. The case for realism in Henry James's the art of fiction'. 9. The provincialism of F.R. Leavis. 10. The classicism of Irving Babbit. 11. How reliable is our memory of early childhood? II. Text and context: 12. Heathcliff through feminine eyes. 13. The sacramental view of marriage and Isabel Archer. 14. The sanity of Alice James. 15. John Fowles: two novels. 16. Rhyme and blank verse in drama: a note on Eliot. 17. Arthur Miller as a critic of Ibsen. 18. Albee and the theatre of cruelty. 19. The origins of Osborne's Pacifism. III. Homeland and flights of fancy: 20. Towards on understanding of India. 21. Edward Said's Orientalism and Abbe Dubois. 22. Ashis Nandy on decolonisation. 23. Ghalib and the Lay Reader. 24. Nirad Chaudhuri: in defence of the empire. 25. The comic vision of R.K. Narayan. 26. A society Gone Sour: Naipaul's portrayal of India. 27. V.S. Naipaul and the demythologizing of EI Dorado. 28. Naipaul: the renegade. 29. Anantha Murthy's Samskara: a poetic novel. 30. Men, monsters and archangels. 31. Rushdie and revivalism: a note on the Moor's Last Sigh. 32. Vassanji as an expatriate writer. "The present volume of thirty-three essays brings to the reader a sampling of Kaul's scholarship. Ranging over a period of three centuries, they explore political ideas, Utopian vistas, modes of satire, generic developments and fictional flights. History and philosophy rub shoulders with each other as eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries unfold themselves in different ways. The writer's grounding in his home culture has leaped across languages and geographies; the sharp penetrative vision and the argumentative mind led him to spot the 'out of ordinary', the slip which is not noticed by the ordinary reader. The distance from the thesis in question is balanced and objective. There is a refusal to be seduced by the sheer popularity or wide acceptance of a critical opinion. The volume is divided into three sections: History, ideas and movements, Texts and contexts and homeland and Flights of Fancy, signifying the journey of the writer from theoretical formulation to a close focussing on text, to a final arrival in the home culture and the diasporic writer, engagement with postcolonial frameworks and literary experiments. Together they supply substance to argument, provoke thought and invite a dialogue." (jacket).

Seller Inventory # 38681

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Literary Debates
• Publisher: Rawat
• Publication Date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 8170338727
• ISBN 13: 9788170338727
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

"The present volume of thirty-three essays brings to the reader a sampling of Kaul's scholarship. Ranging over a period of three centuries, they explore political ideas, utopian vistas, modes of satire, generic developments and fictional flights. History and philosophy rub shoulders with each other as eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries unfold themselves in different ways. The writer's grounding in his home culture has leaped across languages and geographies; the sharp penetrative vision and the argumentative mind led him to spot the 'out of ordinary', the slip which is not noticed by the ordinary reader. The distance from the thesis in question is balanced and objective. There is a refusal to be seduced by the sheer popularity or wide acceptance of a critical opinion. The volume is divided into three sections: History, Ideas and Movements, Texts and Contexts and Homeland and Flights of Fancy, signifying the journey of the writer from theoretical formulation to a close focussing on text, to a final arrival in the home culture and the diasporic writer, engagement with postcolonial frameworks and literary experiments. Together they supply substance to argument, provoke thought and invite a dialogue."