Studies in Literature in English (Set of 17 Volumes)

The essays included in this volume constitute the first volume of a new series Studies in Literature in English. It is extremely fascinating to see how in different historical and cultural situations literatures produced in different countries assume different shapes notwithstanding their generic similarity in search for identity and search for roots.

The spectrum of views offered in the present volume on as different authors as Dryden, Pope, Coleridge, Keats, Bronte, Dickens, Conrad, Eliot, Lawrence, Russell, and Lee Zacharias, Mark Twain, O'Neill, or Brian Moore, Coetzee, Soyinka helps us to have a glimpse of the rich variety of English literature down the ages and across the spaces.

Anybody who is interested in English literature as literature, or as a function of Culture Studies, will find this book extremely interesting. Teachers, scholars, and students of English literature will also find the book useful because of the authors' masterly handling of canonical texts.

Mohit K. Ray, a full Professor since 1982, is one of the senior most professors in the country. He has published three books and a large number of research papers in scholarly journals in India and abroad, which reflect his wide range of scholarship including Criticism, Comparative Literature, Comparative Poetics and Translation Studies. He has also edited several books.

Professor Ray is associated with many international bodies, and has attended and chaired sessions as an invited participant in different parts of the world - England, France, Austria, Finland, Estonia, America, Canada, Japan, Hong Kong, etc.

Professor Ray has studied several languages including Latin, Sanskrit, Arabic, French and German, etc. He edits two research journals.

The essays included in this volume constitute the first volume of a new series Studies in Literature in English.

The series as envisaged is intended to focus on mainstream British literature as well as various literatures produced in English in different parts of the world: America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, West Indies, India, Africa, etc. "Out of evil cometh good," the saying goes, and the good that has come out of British imperialism is that more literatures in English are produced outside the British isles than within it. Not only that. The very fact that a number of writers such as Patrick White (Australia), Wole Soyinka (Africa), Derek Walcott (West Indies), Tony Morrison (America), et al. have received the prestigious Nobel Prize for literature proves that the world body of literature in English is of a very high quality today.

In this particular volume we start discussions with focus on the mainstream British literature; but the volume also includes essays in the areas of American literature, Canadian literature and African literature.

In the subsequent volumes of this series we hope to include more perspectives on many other literatures in English in addition to the mainstream literature. It is true that we have cast our net very wide. But it is also true that the magnificent dimensions of the world body of literatures in English demands it.

It is extremely fascinating to see how in different historical and cultural situations literatures produced in different countries assume different shapes notwithstanding their generic similarity in search for identity and search for roots.

The spectrum of critical views offered in the present volume on as different authors as Dryden, Pope, Cleridge, Keats, Bronte, Dickens, Conrad, Eliot, Lawrence, Russell, and Lee Zacharias, Mark Twain, O'Neill, or Brian Moore, Coetzee, Soyinka helps to have a glimpse of the rich variety of English literature I the ages and across the spaces.

Rama Kundu in her essay on Dryden has made a analytical study of Dryden's All for Love, vis-a-vis Shakesper’s Antony and Cleopatra in the light of Bloom's 'anxie influence' .

Mohit K. Ray has applied Foucaldian ideas of sexuality Pope's celebrated text The Rape of the Lock.

Rama Kundu has examined "The Rime of the An, Mariner" from an archetypal perspective.

Varghese Dolly explores the process by which Keats’ sensuousness becomes gradually sublimated into spirituality v beauty and truth merge.

P.N. Sinha has tried to show how a kind of 'divine con is effected by the union of Heathcliff and Catherine, n heaven but on earth, after death.

Amar Nath Prasad attempts to correct the notion Dickens is chiefly an entertainer and stresses that at bottom Dickens is profoundly humanitarian in his treatment 0 suffering multitude.