Literary Theory: (Re) Reading Culture and Aesthetics

Edited by Jameela Begum and B. Hariharan

Literary Theory: (Re) Reading Culture and Aesthetics brings into focus the possibilities of interpreting and (re)interpreting texts within a socio-cultural and aesthetic context. Theory as a story grammar of culture and aesthetics, no longer a ‘parasitic’ form totally dependent on the text, has become a vibrant body of knowledge. The contributors to this volume offer fresh perspectives and new thinking on the concept of theory as a story grammar. They revaluate the divergent viewpoints that range from Indian aesthetics, structuralism, poststructuralism, post-modernism, feminism, and womanist perspectives to new historicism and postcolonialism.

The book is a confluence of voices from the Indian subcontinent, England, Canada and Australia. These voices include Krishan Rayan, K. Ayyappa Paniker, Coral Ann Howells, Robert Kroetsch, David Williams, Barbara Godard, Marvin Gilman and others. The essays have been so arranged as to generate other discourses, voices. This is an attempt to read the story grammar of culture and aesthetics which finally makes for a telling and retelling of tales to the reader and the text.

 
Jameela Begum is Professor of English at the University of Kerala. As a Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute Fellow at York University, Toronto, she also gave a series of Lectures on Canadian Literature there in 1990 and 1993. She has presented papers at various national and international conferences on Canadian Studies. She teaches Canadian Texts at the PG level and has conducted workshops and orientation programmes on Canadian Literature for college teachers. She has published extensively in scholarly journals and has edited the volume Commonwealth Literature: Themes and Techniques, Canadian Literature: Perspectives, South Asian Canadian and an anthology of poems Canadian Voices.

B. Hariharan (b. 1966) is Head, Department of English, Prajyoti Niketan College, Pudukad, Kerala. He was a Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute fellow at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg in 1992-93. He has presented papers at various national and international conferences on Canadian Studies and published articles in scholarly journals. His M.Phil.dissertation was on Northrop Frye and his doctoral work was on the fiction of Robert Kroetsch.
Contributors : Krishna Rayan, K. Ayyappa Paniker, David Williams, Maggie Ann Bowers, Chelva Kanakanayagam, C.P.Ravichandra, K.Santhanam, Maya Dutt, Abhijit Karkun, Marvin Gilman, K.Chellappan, Lalitha Ramamurthi, V.C. Harris, P.A. Abraham, Govind Shahani, Smaro Kamboureli, Coomi S. Vevaina, Barbara Godard, Shirin Kudchedkar, Coral Ann Howells, Vijay K. Sharma and Robert Kroetsch.
 
 
ISBN 81-85753-16-4           1997           311 pp           Rs.440 (hb)
 
The two volumes (Critical Theory and Literary Theory) are well-produced . . . . Together, they achieve a dialogue within themselves, as well as with each other. They indicate some of the directions of the emerging ‘paradigm shift’ in the discipline of English/literary studies.
The Book Review