Indian Ode to the West Wind: Studies in Literary Encounters

Steering clear of the limiting and self-gratifying ‘influence studies’ in literature which Rene Wellek dismissed as ‘cultural book-keeping’ about the influencing and influenced nations, this study makes for a wide-ranging exploration of different literatures and literary texts in terms of their affinities and diversities, ambivalences and appropriations, as also their cross-cultural, socio-political and historical positionings and transactions. The probe, invariably jargon-free and stimulating, covers a variety of literary genres such as the epic, forms of poetry, drama, novel, short story, travelogues, memoirs, the popular literature and the oral traditions, as well as a host of major writers from the classical Sanskrit, Tamil and Greek literatures to their modern Indian and western counterparts. The book embodies an absorbing and highly discerning account of the complex and mutually enriching literary encounters and relationships, especially during the last two centuries, between the Indian writers and those of the rest of the world.