There is a marked awareness about the language of literature and its meaning both in Indian and Western aesthetic thinking. The aestheticians of both schools hold that the language of literature embodies a significant aspect of human experience, and represents a creative pattern of verbal structure to impart meaning effectively. Modern Western aesthetic thinking, which includes theories like formalism, new criticism, stylistics, structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstruction, discourse analysis, semiotics and dialogic criticism, in one way or another emphasizes the study of the language of literature in order to understand its meaning. Similarly, there is a distinct focus on the language of literature and its meaning in Indian literary theories which include the theory of rasa (aesthetic experience), alaṁkāra (the poetic figure), rīti (diction), dhvani (suggestion), vakrokti (oblique expression) and aucitya (propriety). This book explores how the language of literature and its meaning have been dealt with in both Indian and Western aesthetic thinking. In doing so, the study concentrates on Kuntaka’s theory of vakrokti and Ānandavardhana’s theory of dhvani in Indian aesthetic thinking and Russian formalism and deconstruction in Western thinking. The book categorically focuses on the intersection between the theory of vakrokti and Russian formalism and the meeting-point between the theory of dhvani and deconstruction.

This introduction to West Indian poetry is written for readers making their first approach to the poetry of the Caribbean written in English. It offers a comprehensive literary history from the 1920s to the 1980s, with particular attention to the relationship of West Indian poetry to European, African and American literature. Close readings of individual poems give detailed analysis of social and cultural issues at work in the writing. Laurence Breiner's exposition speaks powerfully about the defining forces in Caribbean culture from colonialism to resistance and decolonization.

The present anthology is a collection of fifteen research papers which critically explore the multiple dimensions of contemporary literary theory. It provides a wide spectrum of theories and shows their application to different texts across the globe. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries were witness to three major movements, namely Marxism, Feminism and Postcolonialism, which have led to a serious reconsidering of the so-called metanarratives of literature, science, history, economics, philosophy and anthropology. These movements have brought together a wide variety of human discourses, and have made literary theory an interdisciplinary body of cultural theory which has now become an important model of inquiry into the intricacies and complexities of human existence. The anthology includes articles on poststructuralism, postcolonialism, postmodernism, postfeminism, orientalism, nationalist and hegemonic discourses, subalternity, gender identity, eco-criticism and global aesthetics by eminent scholars and critics.

The book Indian and Western Aesthetics in Sri Aurobindo’s Criticism is a comparative study of Indian and western aesthetics. It depicts the beauty of evolution of multiplicity of theories to vastness of concepts postulated by different literary theoreticians. Moreover, it gives a keen insight into Sri Aurobindo’s aesthetics. His criticism has given the complete synthesis of Indian poetic theories which have striking parallels to modern Western literary theories. He is one of the greatest literary critics who recovered the salient principles of ancient Indian aesthetics and their potentialities. His aesthetics accommodated many modern trends on the foundation of Indian culture that is going to be the mantra of new civilization.