Essays in COMMONWELTH LITERATURE
Heirloom of Multiple Heritage
Edited by: C. D. Narasimhaiah
ISBN: 81-85753-06-7
Year of Pub: 1999
Price: Rs.400.00

Description: What was once dismissed as 'the lingo of lesser breeds', has over the years yielded Commonwealth literature of compelling power and artistry. The essay in this volume evaluate the various constituents of this literature, notably Indian, African, Australian, West Indian and Canadian, and posit how these constituents have come to acquire the 'right of vision', and register the appreciation of difference' with one another. In equal measure, this study examines the responses made by the major Commonwealth writers to the challenge of projecting their multi-lingual and multi-cultural experiences through the medium of English, and the extent to which their works have succeeded in evoking the indigenous flavour of their lives and lands in concert with their own idiom, rhythm, and symbols. In Commonwealth writing, then, William Cowper's rose is, as it were, crossed with his lily to produce Toru Dutt's lotus, 'the queenliest flower that blows.' The Ibo Achebe has given the lie to claims of the white man's civilizing mission and Patrick White, influenced by the homespun vision of M.K. Ghandhi, has written novels of suffering and spiritual fibre. While the essay unreservedly give credit where it is due, they are candidly critical of what their author calls the inflated reputations of V.S. Naipaul and Nirad Chaudhuri and the spurious reputations of Salman Rushdie and Vikram Seth.

 

Editor: C.D. Narasimahaiah, educated at the Universities of Mysore and Cambridge, was Professor of English at the University of Mysore from 1950 to 1979. Reckefeller Fellow at Princeton (1949-50) and Fulbright Visiting Lecturer at Yale (1958-59), he was Visiting Professor at several universities, including Leeds (U.K.), Texas (U.S.A.), Queensland and Flinders (Australia). He is currently Director, the Library Criterion Centre for English Studies and Indigenous Arts, Dhvanyaloka, Mysore. Pioneer of American Literature studies in India in the fifties and sixties and of Commonwealth Literature studies in the seventies, Professor Narasimhaiah has authored numerous research articles and edited over a dozen books published, among others, by Macmillan and Oxford University Press. His major book-length studies include The Swan and the Eagle, Jawaharlal Nehru, Raja Rao, Writer's Gandhi, Moving Frontiers of English Studies in India, and Indian Critical Sence : Controversial Essays. Professor Narasimahaiah was elected (Global) Chairman, Association for Commonwealth Literature (1974-77), and President, All India English Teacher's Conference (989). Awarded Padma Bhshan by the Government of India in the year 1990, he ranks among the most sensitive, bold, and distinguished scholar-critics of India.