Critical Explorations: A Collection of Some of The Critical Utterances of an Indian Seeker After Excellence

It gives me immense pleasure to gather my various articles, papers and reviews, both published and unpublished in national and international journals, and present them in one place for the benefit of the lovers of English letters. I have evolved by combining the critical insight of the Sanskrit poetics with the critical ideas of the Western thinkers-a task, by no means, ignoble or insignificant. Bharata, Bhamabha, Dandi, Vamana, Kuntaka, Mammatha, Kshemendra and Panditaraja Jagannatha, on the one hand, and Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Longinus, Sidney, Dryden, Johnson, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Arnold, Eliot, Leavis, Cleanth Brooks, Earl Wasserman and R.S. Crane, on the other - all stand exploited here alike, giving rise to a unique eclectic critical methodology for the analysis of Western texts and authors in an entirely new way. The same critical methodology is reflected in the analysis of the writings of Indian English authors. In case the former category of critics (i.e. the Sanskrit acharyas) were found to be of any help in understanding and appreciating Western literature at all, I did not feel hesitated to exploit their valuable insights. Similary, wherever the criticat ideas of the critics of the latter category were felt to be suited to the analysis of the texts on hand, I used them without any hitch whatsoever, even if the texts concerned happened to be of Indian origin. East and West stand fused very beautifully in this volume.

The author of this volume is Dr. Krishna Gopal Srivastava, at the moment Vice Chancellor-in-charge of the University of Allahabad by virtue of his position as the Seniormost Professor of the University. He is, in all probability, the Seniormost Professor of English in the whole of the country in active service of an eminent University. He had a brilliant academic record, always standing first in his academic career. He was born on the 13 of November 1945 in village Kalichabad, Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh. He obtained the Master's Degree in English in 1964 from the University of Gorakhpur and the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English from Gauhati University, Assam, under the supervision of the eminent scholar of English-Professor Amaresh Dutta, on Aristotle's Doctrine of Katharsis. Professor Srivastava was British Council scholar at the University of Glasgow, U.K., during 1973-74 where he came in contact with scholars like Eva Schaper, P.H. Butter and Philip Hobsbaum. After serving the University of Gorakhpur from 1964 to 1978 as a Lecturer in English, he joined the University of Allahabad as a Reader in English in 1978 where he became a Professor of English in 1988 and Head of the Department of English & Modern European Languages in 2003. He was Dean, Faculty of Arts during 2004-2007 and is Member of the Academic Council and the Executive Council, University of Allahabad.

His eminent book entitled Bhagavad-Gita and the English Romantic Movement: A Study in Influence (Macmillan India, New Delhi, 2002) has proved to be quite revolutionary; it has highlighted, for the first time, with documentary evidence, India's contributions to the upsurge of the Romantic Movement in England. He intends Publishing very shortly An Encyclopaedia of Critical terms: Eastern and Western Traditions which will supply examples of practically all critical terms of Sanskrit from Western writings, especially English literature in addition to the examples from Indian texts. Professor Srivastava has also established himself as a verse translator of Sophocles, Kalidasa and Keats, keeping very close to the original text in each case.

It gives me immense pleasure to gather my various articles, papers and reviews, both published and unpublished in national and international journals, and present them in one place for the benefit of the lovers of English letters. Some of the first category of my writings have already appeared in highly reputed international journals like The British Journal of Aesthetics and The Explicator while a few of them were able to find favour with national journals of high repute such as Viswabharati Quarterly, Aligarh Journal of English Studies, Literary Criticism and Points of View. Those, which fall under the second category, had been presented in different national seminars in places like Rajasthan University, Jaipur; Chaudhari Charana Singh University, Meerut; Rani Durgawati Vishvavidyalaya, Jabalpur, Jodhpur University, Jodhpur, or were delivered as extension lectures at the Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. However, what unites them is the special critcal approach that I have evolved by combining the critical insight of the Sanskrit poetics with the critical ideas of the Western thinkers a task, by no means, ignoble or insignificant. Bharata, Bhamabha, Dandi, Vamana, Kuntaka, Mammatha, Kshemendra and Panditaraja Jagannatha, on the one hand, and Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Longinus, Sidney, Dryden, Johnson, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Amold, Eliot, Leavis, Cleanth Brooks, Earl Wasserman and R.S. Crane, on the other all stand exploited here alike, giving rise to a unique eclectic critical methodology for the analysis of Western texts and authors in an entirely new way. The same critical methodology is reflected in the analysis of the writings of Indian English authors. In case the former category of critics (i.e. the Sanskrit acharyas) were found to be of any help in understanding and appreciating Western literature at all, I did not feel hesitated to exploit their valuable insights. Similary, wherever the criticat ideas of the critics of the latter category were felt to be suited to the analysis of the texts on hand, I used them without any hitch whatsoever, even if the texts concerned happened to be of Indian origin. East and West stand fused very beautifully in this volume. It would be really quite interesting to provide some historical information in regard to the papers incorporated in the present volume.

I would proceed chronologically. "A New Look at the 'Katharsis' Clause of Aristotle's Poetics" was the first paper that had made me intellectually bold and self-confident. It was published in The British Journal of Aesthetics (Summer 1972 issue). I was a Lecturer in English at the University of Gorakhpur, now Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Vishvavidyalaya, Gorakhpur, at that time. It is a very original paper and presents a very fresh interpretation of the knotty 'Katharsis' clause in Aristotle's definition of Tragedy, given at the outset of the sixth chapter of the Poetics. The paper takes a kallistic (i.e. Beauty-related) and structural-technical view of the term 'Katharsis' by referring it to the events involving suffering and pain ('Pathermaton' as Aristotle calls them) which get transformed into an object of beauty and become ultimately the source of pleasure as a result of the artistic process called 'Mimesis'. This paper had brought me very high praise from many countries of the world -America, England, Belgium, Bulgaria etc.. It had also won for me the British Council Fellowship, enabling me to go to the University of Glasgow (U.K.) during the academic session of 1973-1974 where I made friends with scholars like -Prof. P.H. Butter, Prof. Hobsbaum and Prof. Eva Schaper.

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