About the Book:
This is an original approach to poetry the poetic process and to an interpretation of the various constituents of poetry and of the configuration of all these elements into the tradition of Indian aesthetics that has always regarded great poets as seers and prophets. Stimulated by European literary criticism and by modern critics like T. S. Eliot, I. A. Richards and the New Critics Indian aesthetics and modern Indian thinkers like sri Aurobindo's, Professor Vinayak Krishna Gokak has formulated a theory of Poetry which is a new and synthetic statement doing justice to all aspects of the subjects. His experience as Professor of English language and a literature in quite a few Indian universities and as Professor of Literary Interpretation to teachers and lectures from all over Indian has stood him in good stead in this formulation.
The book opens with an account of the poetic process in which all the key-words of aesthetic theory-Inspiration, Imitation, expression and configuration are seen to fit into their places in a comprehensive account of the poetic process. This is followed by chapter on: Vision in Poetry, The Four Levels of Poetic Vision, The Five Kinds of Poetic Vision, The Poet and Structure of Personality. The most original part of this account of Poetry comes up next un an analysis of Attitudes and Moods in Poetry. Chapters follow this on: Poetic Meaning, Rhythm, Diction, Style, a Touch stone of Poetry and the Fulfillment of Poetry.
Students of Poetry who pick up this book will not be easily inclined to lay it down till they have finished reading it . For many of them it will be a profound experience to be cherished and remembered for long.
About the Author:
He is one of the important figures in modern Indian literature. He received the Central Sahitya Academy award for his poem, Dyaya Prithvi and also the Government of India award, Padam Shri in 1961. He represented India at the PEN World Conference in Tokyo in 1957 and the Biennial Conference of Poets in Belgium in 1961. He presided over the All Karnataka Literary Conference in 1958.
A well known scholar and educationist he has also been Principle of Colleges in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Karnataka University and Director of the Central Institute of English and the Indian Institute of Advanced Study. A Professor of English language and literature in major colleges with postgraduate status under Bombay, Poona universities, and in Osmania University, he was Professor of Literary Interpretation in the Central Institute of English. He was also a member of the University Grants Commission. He presided over the All India English Teacher's Conference in Delhi in 1960 and he was vice- President of the Commonwealth Conference on he Teaching of English in Uganda in 1961.
He is the recipient of the degree of D. Litt. Honoris Causa from Karnataka University in 1967 and the University of the Pacific, California, U.S.A, in 1970.
In this book, I have endeavoured to view the facts of the poetic process from a fresh angle. It has been the result of long study during such intervals as my teaching and administrative assignments left me for critical and creative work. It was not as though I took to poetics as an academic topic on which research could be undertaken. Rather, I gravitated towards it in order to satisfy my curiosity and to explain to myself the phenomena that kept on pleasing and baffling me at the same time. Such satisfaction as has been mine on the subject, I offer to the reader in this book.
One cannot help falling into a 'school' of thought while writing on a subject of this kind. Innate predictions lead us in a particular direction and it is not wise to fight against them though it is essential to examine them thoroughly in the perspective of all leading schools of opinion on the subject. The reader will realise that I have been interested in the application of psychology to the problems before me. The obstrusion of metaphysics has been cut down to the minimum.
My thinking has been stimulated by reading outstanding western critics like Plato, Aristotle, Longinus, Dryden, Coleridge, Arnold, I.A. Richards, T.S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats and others. On the Indian side, the entire aesthetic, tradition of Bharata, Anandavardhana, Kuntaka and others has been an inspiration to me. The great modern synthesizers like Ananda Coomaraswamy and Sri Aurobindo have helped me in my own synthetic approach. The leader will see that, if I learn towards western conclusions in one chapter. It is the Indian impact or the spell of the synthesizers that holds the foreground in the other. But he will not fail to see my own viewpoint presented in the book, especially in chapters 1, 6, 7, 8, 11 and 13.
I am grateful to my publishers for having brought out this book promptly.
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