Reflections on Literature, Criticism and Theory: Essays in Honour of Professor Prafulla C Kar
Edited by Sura P Rath, Kailash C Baral and D Venkat Rao
 
 

This volume of twenty-two essays is prepared to honour Professor Prafulla C Kar on the occasion of his retirement from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda after about four decades of an illustrious career in the profession. The essays appear in five clusters: the first two essays lay the foundation for reflections on the correspondence between the past and the present and its implications for the future of literary studies; the next four spatially localize the questions raised, addressing issues such as the practice of criticism in India, its ethical dimensions in the evolving intellectual life in the country, and its impact on the changing canon; the third cluster of four essays focuses on Romantic theory, especially on the poetry of Wordsworth and Keats, an area of Kar’s pedagogical interest; the fourth and fifth groups similarly address Kar’s two other research interest areas, postcolonial studies and cultural studies. The volume closes with five essays focusing on individual authors; and the final essay points to the changing perspective on European cultural history, providing literary scholars a fresh way of examining culture and society in relation to their close imbrications with literature and the values that literature embodies.

 
Sura P Rath is currently a professor of English and Director of the William O. Douglas Honors College at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, USA. He has edited Flannery O’Connor: New Perspectives (University of Georgia Press, 1996; with Mary ann Shaw), Sitakant Mahapatra: The Mythographer of Time (2201), and Theory and Praxis: Curriculum, Culture and English Studies (Pencraft, 2003; with Kar and Baral). His articles have appeared in journals in India, Europe, and the United States. He is at work on a critical study of V.S. Naipaul.

Kailash C Baral is Director, Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, North-East Campus at Shillong. He is the author of the book Freud’s Theory of Arts and Literature (1994) and has edited two books, Humanities and Pedagogy: Teaching of Humanities Today (2002) and Interpretation of Texts (2002). He has also co-edited the book Theory and Praxis: Curriculums, Culture and English Studies (2003) and has published papers on Indian English literature, psychoanalysis, and postcolonial criticism.

D Venkat Rao is a professor at the School of Critical Humanities, Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad. He did postdoctoral research at the University of California at Berkeley, University of Washington at Seattle, and University of Chicago. He has taught at Kakatiya University, University of Poona and University of Washington. His areas of interest include literary and cultural studies, hypermedia, internet research image studies, and mnemocultures. He has published articles in research journals in India and abroad.
Contributors : Makarand Paranjape, D.Venkat Rao, Mohan G.Ramanan, E.V.Ramakrishnan, John Oliver Perry, Bibhash choudhury, Rajnath, Sura P Rath, Kalidas Misra, TRS Sharma , Nandana Dutta, Pramod K.Nayar, Dilip K.Das, Bijay K.Danta, Chung-Hsiung Lai, K.Narayana Chandran, Rakhee Moral, Fred Dallmayr, Alladi Uma, Gita Viswanath.
 
ISBN 81-85753-62-8            2007           288 pp           Rs.550 (hb)