Balachandra Rajan – författare

First published in 1970. Few books on Milton have dealt with his poetry as a whole. The present study, a discussion of Milton’s major poetry, seeks to examine each of the poems on its own distinctive grounds and also to delineate the pattern of continuity which the poems enter into and sustain. The author shows how each poem creates its own strategy of insight and demonstrates that together they explore and define a centre of recognition more fully than is possible with any single work.

The book makes full use of the results of Milton scholarship and will provide a basis for a fresh appreciation of the complexity and unity of Milton’s achievement.

First published in 1970. Few books on Milton have dealt with his poetry as a whole. The present study, a discussion of Milton’s major poetry, seeks to examine each of the poems on its own distinctive grounds and also to delineate the pattern of continuity which the poems enter into and sustain. The author shows how each poem creates its own strategy of insight and demonstrates that together they explore and define a centre of recognition more fully than is possible with any single work.

The book makes full use of the results of Milton scholarship and will provide a basis for a fresh appreciation of the complexity and unity of Milton’s achievement.

This chief aim of this title, first published in 1965, is to present a comprehensive picture of Yeats’s achievement and some of the means for an evaluation of that achievement. To this end both the poems and plays have been examined and some of Yeats’s critical ideas have been briefly discussed. Professor Rajan’s study provides a compact introduction to Yeats’s work, and will be of interest to the general reader as well as to students of literature.

This chief aim of this title, first published in 1965, is to present a comprehensive picture of Yeats’s achievement and some of the means for an evaluation of that achievement. To this end both the poems and plays have been examined and some of Yeats’s critical ideas have been briefly discussed. Professor Rajan’s study provides a compact introduction to Yeats’s work, and will be of interest to the general reader as well as to students of literature.

This volume brings together five papers read at the University of Western Ontario in 1971 to mark the tercentenary of the publication of Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. It commemorates what tradition has regarded as Milton’s final poetic communication.

In the first essay, Arthur Barker describes Milton’s progress towards his last two poems, placing his ideas and ideals within a seventeenth-century context. Closely argued, the essay relates Paradise Lost to Samson Agonistes, and both works to Milton’s earlier poetry and prose. Barbara Lewalski, in a seminal essay, explores the complex ways in which the ideas of time and history contribute to Paradise Lost: to develop its thematic subtleties, advance its dramatic action, and assist in the characterization of the principal personages. The editor’s essay reveals how in Samson Agonistes Milton dramatized his idea that an ethic of self-reliance must be made to join hands with a theology of dependence.’ He also explores, for the first time, the proposition that Milton published Paradise: Regained and Samson Agonistes, together because he meant to say something through the juxtaposition. Irene Samuel rejects the usual reading of Paradise Regained – that it concerns an identity crisis – and proposes that its central concern is the choice of a life style. In the concluding essay, Northrop Frye contends that ‘Milton intended Paradise Regained to be a Christian conquest of the Classical genre of dramatic tragedy.’ He argues that both poems express the central revolutionary attitude, in social and religious contexts, that Milton held and expressed in his prose writings.

The variety of approaches in this volume demonstrates the breadth of the poet’s vision and advances our knowledge of Milton along very original lines.