3 Review(s)

Contemporary Indian English Poetry: Comparing Male and Female Voices is a detailed exposition of the multiple dimensions of creativity in men and women vis-à-vis the difference of sexuality and gender as mirrored in their texts. This innovative and perceptive study confronts the essentialist bio-deterministic standpoint that men and women are different, dissimilar, and divergent. By discussing the texts of the post-Independence men and women poets of India and drawing comparisons between them, the book asserts that, despite certain biological differences, men and women are similar in many ways. By employing theoretical approaches based on psychoanalysis, linguistics, poetics, reader-responses, and cultural and gender studies, it expounds that gender or sexuality can make some difference to the aesthetic, but it cannot solely determine the content. The social, cultural, and political milieu of the day plays a crucial role in deciding the content and object of writing, besides conditioning the psyche and thought process of the author, more than gender or sexual difference does. This study provides new insights into the varied aspects of man-woman relationship, the nitty-gritty of different family relations, the milieu, human correlation with nature, and metaphysical questionings of life, death, God, and human existence, besides analyzing the influence of gender and sexual difference on poetic craft, particularly on language, style, and technique. The book analyses the poems of over twelve major Indian men and women poets and compares them in terms of diverse themes, diction, and idiom, and with particular focus on the workings of gender and sexual difference. The major poets discussed are Nissim Ezekiel, A.K. Ramanujan, Keki N. Daruwalla, Shiv K. Kumar, and Jayanta Mahapatra among men and Monika Varma, Kamala Das, Gauri Deshpande, Sunita Jain, Suniti Namjoshi, Mamata Kaliya, and Eunice de Souza among women.