ABSTRACT

This volume is a cross-cultural study of the evolution of civilisation. Drawing its material and inspiration from literature and culture, it looks at the achievements of humankind as a single imaginative experience. The book examines how traditions of poetry and literature have shaped cultures, societies and civilisations, and their inter-relatedness. Analysing stereotypes in Asia and Europe, the author raises questions fundamental to our perceptions of culture, democracy, and language. He throws light on dominant languages and languages cast aside by the tides of history, and attributes the status of English as a 'world language' to ideas propagated in the great epics of the West — particularly Roman — and the poetic heritage shaped by them.

Discussing the fallout of that dream on other cultures and ‘non-technical’ languages of the world, this book investigates questions of legitimacy and desirability of a single language or culture becoming universal.

A sensitive and nuanced work, it promises a good read for general readers as well as researchers interested in world literature, comparative literature, sociology and cultural studies, in the interaction between science and art, and in the forces that shape the world order.

chapter 1|12 pages

Not an introduction

chapter 2|5 pages

Virgil

The ideal poet

chapter 3|7 pages

Dante

An unveiling of Europe

chapter 4|7 pages

The unprecedented pair

chapter 5|4 pages

On milton

chapter 6|6 pages

“Pṛthivyā iva Mānadaṇḍaḥ” 1

chapter 7|13 pages

The ideal character

chapter 8|12 pages

The epic tradition and Milton

chapter 9|13 pages

The culture that speaks

chapter 10|9 pages

Changing cultures and living traditions

chapter 11|15 pages

To Homer again

chapter 12|24 pages

The first epic

chapter 13|30 pages

Kalidasa’s prayer

chapter 14|8 pages

Translations and versions

chapter 15|10 pages

Breaking and making tradition

chapter 16|4 pages

The modernists 1

chapter 17|7 pages

The final shape

chapter 18|35 pages

“Kālasya niścayaḥ” 1

chapter 19|27 pages

The sublimity of Kalidasa

chapter 20|14 pages

“Play on, pressing to the bosom …!” 1

chapter 21|17 pages

Beyond East and West

chapter 22|4 pages

Towards new beginnings