GYAN Bhava

  New criticism is the name of a movement in literary criticism which developed in 1910 in the United States of America and extended to Britain as well in the 1920s and 1930s.The publication of John Crowe  Ransom's book , The New Criticism , in 1941 is considered to be the starting point of New Criticism as a critical approach. It was a shift from the old (traditional) criticism , hence the name New Criticism. Old(traditional) criticism focused entirely on the biography and psychology of the writer ,his background and the historical situation, when the text was written.  The New Critics advocated a method based on close reading of the text alone and detailed textual analysis of the text and ignored all extraneous factors such as the mind and personality of the writer. It sought to move away from the traditional critical approaches based on biography, intentions of the author and social impact, and shifted the focus away from the author and contexts, to the formal aspects...

 The essay The Reawakening of India has been taken from Jawaharlal Nehru's work 'Glimpses of World's History' . It is in the form of a letter which Jawaharlal Nehru wrote  to his daughter Indira Gandhi while imprisonment in the year 1932. In this essay he talks about the various religious and political reform movements which took place in India in the 19th Century and trace it down to the condition of India around the year 1914. In the present letter, he indicates the main causes of poverty and misery in India. He denies the fact that it is British rule and its policy which brought poverty and misery in the country. British were just the agent to make India suffer. He appreciates the impact of imperial rule which brought a feeling of political unity and nationality in India though it was painful. He speaks about famous personalities who contributed to Indian Renaissance and also were responsible in some way or the other for the independence of India. He speaks about Raj...

  Kamala Das was born in Punnayurkulam ,Kerala in 1934.She is a well-known bilingual Indian woman writer .She writes both in English and Malayalam. She has earned a respectable place in both English and Malayalam literature. She has published several works of fiction in Malayalam under the pen name of Madhavikutty. She has written several poems, an autobiography, a  novel and several collections of short stories in English. She has published three slender volumes of poetry. Her autobiography ,published in 1976, created quite a stir . She was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize for literature in 1984. Her important works include Summer in Kolkata (1963), Sirens (1964), The Descendents (1967), The Old Playhouse and other poems (1973), The Anamatal poems (1985), Only Saint Knows How to Sing (1996), and Yes Allah (2001). She is known for her sexual adventures in her writings: for her, love hardly ever goes beyond sex and lust- which even reaches the point of nausea, and is reborn ag...

 This essay by Rabindranath Tagore which is called The Spirit of Freedom, has been taken from the collection entitled Creative Unity. It was originally the contents of a letter from New York to the author's own countrymen. Rabindranath Tagore was a lover of human freedom and opined that freedom of a nation will provide sufficient scope to its citizens to express their views openly . Tagore was swayed by the western liberalism.  In this essay we see the influence of western liberalism .It compares and contrasts the spirit of freedom in the West and in India. Freedom according to him has a spiritual root.The focus is mainly on two types of freedom . The freedom of expression and the freedom of conscience. The citizens of a nation should have a choice to express their views openly and without any fear. Political freedom is not freedom unless it is accompanied by spiritual freedom . It is the spiritual freedom which is the driving force behind political freedom and helps one in ...

 Kamala Das is one of the more famous female Indian English poets. She writes in English  language , although her mother tongue is Malayalam. She has published many works in Malayalam ,but her international recognition is due to her poetry in English. Kamala Das's poetry is primarily autobiographical and her theme is love of a lonely heart , love with never ending passion, lust, greed and hunger that never satiate. She is a confessional poet. She frankly and frequently confesses in her poetry a large number of things exclusively related to her own self. Her 'self'  emerges powerfully in her poetry. She fully exposes the exploitation of woman by men through her poems.  Poetry for her is something deeply personal that provides her with the strongest possible outlet for her pent up feelings. Kamala Das's poetry is the poetry of protest . There is a very strong cathartic power in her confessional poetry. Her poetry is largely devoted to her confessions of her sex-life. S...

 ' An Introduction ' is a loosely structured poem of 59 lines ,written by one of the most distinctive Indian poets, Kamala Das. She is a bilingual writer ,writing both in Malayalam and English. It is an autobiographical poem like most other poetry written by Kamala Das. She reveals in a bold manner glimpses of her life, her political knowledge, her linguistic acquirements ,her physical growth, her belongings, her quest for love, her sad experience in her marriage and her eventual frustration and loneliness. She is writing for and from women's experience. This poem is a poem of protest, a feminine demand for recognizing their claim as an independent individual, not simply a woman. The poem frankly presents her own feelings, thoughts and experience of life through this poem. It throws considerable light on her use of English language which is not her mother tongue.The poem is written as a dramatic monologue in free verse in a colloquial style.This confessional poem is taken f...