R.K. Narayan S Career As A Novelist And Short Story Writer Spans Almost Eight Decades From Swami And Friends (1935) To Grandmother S Tale (1992) Until His Death On 13 May 2001 At The Ripe Age Of 95. His Distinctive Sense Of Humour, His Trade Mark Irony, His Bemused, Knowing, Overseeing Perspective, His Rootedness In Religion And Family Values And His Inescapable Capturing Of The Essence Of Indian Sensibility All Have Been Looked At From A Refreshingly New Perspective, Hitherto Only Partly Touched Or Left Unexplored And Unattempted. New Insights Into The Guide, The Maneater Of Malgudi, A Tiger For Malgudi, Waiting For The Mahatma, The Dark Room Exploit Freshly-Forged Tools Of Critical Analysis Comparative, Structural, New Historical , Feminist, Bakhtinian, Post-Colonial And Socio-Cultural And Ethical.A Welcome Addition To The Extant Critical Scholarship On R.K. Narayan S Ouevre.A Lucid Discussion Of New Dimensions In Literary Theory Through Well-Argued, Illustrative Analysis Of Popular Texts.A Scholarly Elucidation Of The Sociology Of Hinduism As Reflected In Popular Fiction.An Indispensable Source-Book For Students, Researchers, Teachers, Scholars In Inter-Related Fields Like Literary Criticism, Theory Of Literature, Indian Philosophy, Customs And Thought-Patterns, Besides Social Anthropology And Sociology.

Stories are everywhere around us, from the ads on TV or music video clips to the more sophisticated stories told by books or movies. Everything comes wrapped in a story, and the means employed to weave the narrative thread are just as important as the story itself. In this context, there is a need to understand the role storytelling plays in contemporary society, which has changed drastically in recent decades. Modern global society is no longer exclusively dominated by the time-tested narrative media such as literature or films because new media such as videogames or social platforms have changed the way we understand, create, and replicate stories. The Handbook of Research on Contemporary Storytelling Methods Across New Media and Disciplines is a comprehensive reference book that provides the relevant theoretical framework that concerns storytelling in modern society, as well as the newest and most varied analyses and case studies in the field. The chapters of this extensive volume follow the construction and interpretation of stories across a plethora of contemporary media and disciplines. By bringing together radical forms of storytelling in traditional disciplines and methods of telling stories across newer media, this book intersects themes that include interactive storytelling and narrative theory across advertisements, social media, and knowledge-sharing platforms, among others. It is targeted towards professionals, researchers, and students working or studying in the fields of narratology, literature, media studies, marketing and communication, anthropology, religion, or film studies. Moreover, for interested executives and entrepreneurs or prospective influencers, the chapters dedicated to marketing and social media may also provide insights into both the theoretical and the practical aspects of harnessing the power of storytelling in order to create a cohesive and impactful online image.

The book is basically athematic study of R.K. Nrayans novels and a reference to his short stories has been made only in passing. The major themes that emerge from Narayans novels are love and marriage or man woman relationship family relationships under scoring the father son relationship socio cultural and political scene of the country during the last fifty years and the Hindu ethos highlighting renunciations as an ideal of the Hindu way of life. For the first time the major themes of Narayans novels have been clearly worked out and the identity of Malgudi has been convincingly established by the author.

R.K. Narayan And His Social Perspective Deals With The Caste-Ridden Hindu Society Which Narayan Presents In His Novels. His Characters Are Fatalists With Explicit Faith In The Invisible. The Book Presents Their Half¬Hearted Attempts At Self-Assertion. However, Their So-Called Sentimentalism Does Not Bear Fruit And They Fall Back To Their Former Position Accepting Defeat In Life.The Book Brings Out Vividly Narayan S Atti¬Tude To Life, His Firm Grip Of Hindu Ethos Of Which He Is The Product, And His Failure To Come Out Of It, Though The West Wind Has Blown Much Of Its Dust.However Detached He Sounds Himself To The Readers, His True Spirit Finds Vivid Expression In The Book. At Any Rate R.K. Narayan Is A Thoroughly Indian Novelist Par Excellence, And The Aspect Is Hardly To Be Overlooked.

Set against the backdrop of the Indian Freedom Movement, this fiction novel from award-winning Indian writer R. K. Narayan traces the adventures of a young man, Sriram, who is suddenly removed from a quiet, apathetic existence and, owing to his involvement in the campaign of Mahatma Gandhi against British rule in India, thrust into a life as adventurously varied as that of any picaresque hero. “There are writers—Tolstoy and Henry James to name two—whom we hold in awe, writers—Turgenev and Chekhov—for whom we feel a personal affection, other writers whom we respect—Conrad, for example—but who hold us at a long arm’s length with their ‘courtly foreign grace.’ Narayan (whom I don’t hesitate to name in such a context) more than any of them wakes in me a spring of gratitude, for he has offered me a second home. Without him I could never have known what it is like to be Indian.”—Graham Greene “R. K. Narayan...has been compared to Gogol in England, where he has acquired a well-deserved reputation. The comparison is apt, for Narayan, an Indian, is a writer of Gogol’s stature, with the same gift for creating a provincial atmosphere in a time of change....One is convincingly involved in this alien world without ever being aware of the technical devices Narayan so brilliantly employs.”—Anthony West, The New Yorker

No Treatment Of Modern Criticism Is Possible Without Discussing I.A. Richards, Since In The Most Literal Sense His Influence Combined With That Of T.S. Eliot And F.R. Leavis Served To Create It. As One Of Seminal Thinkers Paving The Way For The Development Of New Criticism, Richards Made A Systematic Attempt To Formulate A Theory Of Poetry In Consonance With The Demands Of Modern Scientific Thought.The Present Book Stems From The Need To Offer An Objective Appraisal Of Richards Thought System In The Context Of The Evolution Of His Ideas In Foundations Of Aesthetics, The Meaning Of Meaning, Principles Of Literary Criticism, Science And Poetry (Later Reissued As Poetries And Sciences) And Practical Criticism. In The Context Of Wide-Spread Misinterpretations And Distortions Of Richards Point Of View, The Author Has Tried Throughout This Inter-Disciplinary Work To Allow Richards To Speak For Himself. While Unfolding The Subtle, Suggestive And Consistent Nature Of Richards Early Writings, The Book Studies His Criticism Of Modern Poets Like T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, G.M. Hopkins, Thomas Hardy And D.H. Lawrence. The Chapter On Practical Criticism Throws Light On Richards Technique Of Evaluating Poems And Teaches The Art Of Appreciating Poetry.