Contemporary Indian English Poetry: Comparing Male and Female Voices

The present book is a detailed exposition of the multiple dimensions of creativity in men and women vis-a-vis the difference of sexuality and gender as mirrored in their texts. This innovative and perceptive study confronts the essentialist biodeterministic standpoint that men and women are out and out different, dissimilar and divergent. By discussing the texts of the post-independence men and women poets of India and drawing comparisons between them, it asserts that, despite certain biological differences, men and women are similar in many ways. By employing theoretical approaches based on psychoanalysis, linguistics, poetics, reader-responses and cultural and gender studies, the book expounds that gender or sexuality can make some difference to the aesthetic but it cannot solely determine the content. The social, cultural and political milieu of the day plays a more crucial role in deciding the content and object of writing, besides conditioning the psyche and thought process of the author, than gender or sexual difference does. This study provides new insights into the varied aspects of man-woman relationship, the nitty-gritty of different family relations, the milieu, human correlation with nature, and metaphysical questionings of life, death, God and human existence, besides analysing the influence of gender and sexual difference on poetic craft, particularly on language, style and technique. It analyses the poems of over twelve major Indian men and women poets and compares them in terms of diverse themes, diction and idiom, and with particular focus on the workings of gender and sexual difference. The major poets discussed are Nissim Ezekiel, A.K. Ramanujan, Keki N. Daruwalla, Shiv K. Kumar and Jayanta Mahapatra among men and Monika Varma, Kamala Das, Gauri Deshpande, Sunita Jain, Suniti Namjoshi, Mamta Kalia and Eunice de Souza among women. This study will be extremely useful to the students and teachers. The general readers who are interested in Indian literature in English will find it interesting and informative.