Classical Theory and Criticism
Edited by  A.P. Dani and V.M. Madge

The essays included in this anthology attempt a revaluation of the classical literary theorists and their criticism, as well as an assessment of their pivotal significance in countering and containing the indiscriminate formulations and advances of contemporary critical theory. Drawing upon the concepts and theorizations of a host of critics, for instance Plato, Aristotle, Longinus, Plotinus, Thomas Acquinas and several of their Indian counterparts, these studies uphold the centrality of literary texts, demystify some of the demigods of contemporary critical theory, checkmate the excessively ideology-oriented critical discourses, and reaffirm the persistent rationale of going back to the basics in the discipline. The volume vindicates the need for a normative perspective in critical enquiry, increasingly threatened by warring isms and ideologies of discordant and disaffecting intellectuals.

A.P. Dani is former Reader and Head of the P.G. Department of English at Fergusson College, Pune. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Tragi-Comedies of Dryden, and has published several scholarly essays in well-known research journals. He has also co-edited, alongwith Dr V.M. Madge, Literary Theory and Criticism: Ruminations (Pencraft, 1998). Dr Dani visited several Canadian Universities under the faculty improvement programme of the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute, New Delhi in 1988. Areas of his interest include ELT, new literatures in English, and classical and contemporary critical theory.

V.M. Madge is Reader and Head of the Department of English at A.M. College, Hadapsar (Pune). He has published a good deal of poetry including Academiad, a highly enjoyable mock-heroic poem on the academia, as well as several research articles and the volume Literary Theory and Criticism: Ruminations which he co-edited with Dr A.P. Dani. As a British Council Scholar, Dr Madge visited the University of Kent in 1991 and participated in the Dickens Summer School. His doctoral work on T.S. Eliot is under publication, and currently he is engaged in writing a novel and working on several translation projects.

Contributors : AR.A. Malagi, Mohit K.Ray, V.Y.Kantak, Vijaya Guttal, A.P.Dani, Nutan Gosavi, M.H. Mirasdar, Cyril Deshbruslais s.j, R.S. Pathak, Murray Krieger, Raymond Tallis, V.M. Madge.
 
 
ISBN 81-85753-45-8           2001           157 pp           Rs.320 (hb)