3 Review(s)

A unique characteristic of a canonical text is that it is amenable to multiple interpretations and every age discovers a new meaning in it and a new significance for its own time. The insightful essays that constitute this volume cover a broad spectrum of English literature from Pope to Pinter through Wordsworth, Coleridge, Jane Austen, Dickens, Browning, George Eliot, the Pre-Raphaelites, Swinburne, Wilde, Conrad, Lawrence, Eliot, Spender, Golding, et al. By intelligently using the available scholarship in the field and by using the latest critical tools the scholars have shed new light on old authors and thus have brought the past into a dynamic relationship with the present, modifying the English literary tradition in the process. If it is interesting to see how Coleridge, the greatest exponent of the romantic theory of Imagination, combines reason and imagination in some of his poems, it is no less fascinating to discover post-modern elements in Swinburne; nor is it less intriguing to know how Wilde’s love for smart phrases and ambiguous expressions led to profound misunderstanding of his intentions, for example. While the students of English literature will find this book extremely useful the common readers also will find it excitingly interesting.