ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on R. K. Narayan's semi-autobiographical novel The English Teacher and Anita Desai's elegiac depiction of the decline of Urdu literature in her novel In Custody to complete the analysis of the legacy of Romanticism in Indian literature. The protagonist, Krishna, is an English teacher in the Albert Mission College, set in the familiar world of Malgudi, the fictional South Indian town that appears in Narayan's novels and short stories. Although the references to Romantic literature in modern Indian fiction with which the authors commenced the chapter appeared on the surface to be less than favourably inclined to Romanticism, the chapter suggests that these novels might help us reappraise that initial impression considerably. Curbed and stifled by the custodians of educational and literary institutionalism, the legacy of Romanticism in India is all too easily demeaned or marginalised in the nationalist and postcolonial culture of contemporary India.
