Contents: Preface. I. On Milton: 1. "In sage and solemn tunes" variants of orphicism in Milton's early poetry. 2. Milton and the "Seasons' differences". 3. Milton's Christology in paradise regained. 4. Milton's Abdiel and Valmiki's Vibhishana: a comparative note. 5. Milton and Purchas' Linschoten: an additional source for Milton's Indian Figtree. 6. "That two-handed engine", yet once more. II. On other authors: 7. A context of Spenser's episode of despair. 8. The Jew of Malta : Elizabethan and Caroline. 9. On Marvell's "Garden". 10. Dryden's music diptych. 11. The hymns of Sir William Jones. 12. Antiphonal patterns in Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind". 13. 'Negative capability': an outline exploration. 14. Eliot and Shelley: a sketch of shifts in attitude. 15. Eliot's Rasa Cocktail. 16. 'The Windhover': 108. 17. Yeats and the Swan: the poet's use of an Indian tradition. III. Currents in contemporary critical theory and practice: 18. On the material Bias of cultural politics. 19. Unmasking colonial linguistico-cultural transactions--whither? 20. Postcolonialist perspectives on English literature: the question of perspectivism. 21. Approaches in feminist critical discourse: some problems. 22. Cross-cultural factors in comparative studies: some reflections on cases in point. 23. Analogues: some examples of cross-cultural dialogic correspondence. 24. Theories of dramatic illusion: western and Indian.
"The book presents a selection of S. Viswanathan's papers on English literature in various scholarly periodicals and collections. It has three sections--Milton, on other authors and on contemporary critical theory and practice.
The essays together exemplify a range of historico-critical interpretative approaches and methods. They may be said to bring something new to the perspective in which the literary or critical works concerned may be viewed. The cumulative effect of the essays is to show how the literary work is a site of a close interweave or interpenetration of text and its contexts. Hence the text demands a response which is both contextual (akin to the New critical) and contextual (like the cultural political)." (jacket)
