Where the Dreams Cross: T.S. Eliot and French Poetry
AUTHOR- Chinmoy Guha
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PB ₹450 . $19.95 . ₤16.95 |
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INFORMATION
- AUTHOR : Chinmoy Guha
- HB ISBN : 978-93-90430-59-8
- PB ISBN : 978-81-947560-0-2
- Year : 2020
- Extent : 240
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- Usually dispatched within 3 to 5 working days.
‘The kind of poetry that I needed to teach me the use of my own voice, did not exist in English at all, it was only to be found in French’, admitted T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) in 1940. ‘I am an English poet of American origin who learnt his art under the aegis of Baudelaire and the Baudelairian lineage of poets’, he again stated significantly in 1948, the year of his Nobel Prize. Where the Dreams Cross : T.S. Eliot and French Poetry reconstructs the poetic career of one of the major poets of the twentieth century by closely analysing his creative responses to his favourite French poets and critics, who were influential in Eliot’s development, and of their interrelations with each other, together with the contexts in which Eliot was exposed to their works—all of which enabled the author to cast a new light on an insufficiently considered area and unearth much that was draped in mystery. Vivid, amusing, and in a sense warm and consistently interesting, this book seems to have unmistakable Ancient Mariner gifts— it grips one and convinces. Regarded by Frank Kermode and others as a landmark in Eliot criticism, this book is, according to the Times Higher Education Supplement, ‘an epiphany which unlocked a genius’.
The Author
Chinmoy Guha is Professor of English at the University of Calcutta and a distinguished French scholar. The French Government has honoured him with the titles of Chevalier des Palmes académiques and Chevalier des Arts and des Lettres. The French President has recently conferred on him the prestigious title of Chevalier de l’Ordre national du mérite. Guha has served as Vice-Chancellor, Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata, and Director of Publications, Embassy of France, New Delhi. He has lectured at the universities of Paris, Edinburgh, Oxford, and the Institute of European Studies, Belgrade. His works include Bridging East and West : Rabindranath Tagore and Romain Rolland Correspondence 1919–1940, and translations of La Rochefoucauld, Flaubert, and André Gide. He has won the Sahitya Akademi Award 2019 for his book of essays titled Ghumer Darja Thele.
Guha has gone deeper into the French origins or sources of Eliot than any other
commentator I have encountered.
—Frank Kermode in Sunday Times, London
Guha has done a wonderful job…. It is most thorough and convincing.
—Amiya Dev in The Statesman
The book comes down heavily on all earlier writers on Eliot. It seems certain to cause
a rumpus sooner or later.
—John Bodley, Director, Eliot Estate, UK
Chinmoy Guha’s thoughtful and instructive book—well-written, and free from modish
academese—casts fresh light on Eliot’s poetry, and his enthusiasm for the poet is
infectious.
—Times Higher Education Supplement
Tremendously exciting. It is immensely readable; it is deeply informative. It is a
breakthrough. It will have a far-reaching effect in time in the history of nineteenth
and twentieth century European thought. It is a moment of importance in Indian
scholarship.
—Joe Winter in Asian Age