Beyond East and West: A Story of Civilization through the Great Epics [Hardcover]

1. Not an Introduction 2. Virgil: The Ideal Poet 3. Dante: An Unveiling of Europe 4. The Unprecedented Pair 5. On Milton 6. P[thivy
iva M
nadana% 7. The Ideal Character 8. The Epic Tradition and Milton 9. The Culture that Speaks 10. Changing Cultures and Living Traditions 11. To Homer Again 12. The First Epic 13. Kalidasas Prayer 14. Translations and Versions 15. Breaking and Making Tradition 16. The Modernists 17. The Final Shape 18. K
lasya niscayah 19. The Sublimity of Kalidasa 20. Play on, pressing to the bosom! 21. Beyond East and West 22. Towards New Beginnings

This volume is a cross-cultural study of the evolution of civilisation. Drawing its material and inspiration from literature and culture, it looks at the achievements of humankind as a single imaginative experience. The book examines how traditions of poetry and literature have shaped cultures, societies and civilisations, and their inter-relatedness. Analysing stereotypes in Asia and Europe, the author raises questions fundamental to our perceptions of culture, democracy, and language. He throws light on dominant languages and languages cast aside by the tides of history, and attributes the status of English as a 'world language' to ideas propagated in the great epics of the West  particularly Roman  and the poetic heritage shaped by them.

Discussing the fallout of that dream on other cultures and non-technical languages of the world, tlC-