Foreword : Prof. Howard Wolf
Introduction : Prof. Biyot K. Tripathy 

Departing from the traditional criticism of African American fiction, E. Raja Rao’s criticism shows how the contemporary African American fiction, strongly based on the indigenous “aesthetic tradition” of African American literature, has come of age in the 1960s, a period commonly regarded as the second harlem renaissance. The book focuses on the works of Cyrus Colter, Ishmael Reed, Cllarence Major, Charles Wright, and Alice Walker.

E. Raja Rao is the Head of the Post-Graduate Department of English, Berhampur University, Orissa.

The book covers two important periods of English literature : Victorian and Modern. It seeks to highlight those literary trends in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries which emerged against the background of the prevailing culture, ideology and thought.

This Book takes a fresh look into certain less known aspects of the works and achievements of five key figures of the English literature produced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: William Wordsworth, Oscar Wilde, D.H. Lawrence, T.S. Eliot and Somerset Maugham. 
Dr. R.S. Pathak is Professor and Head of the Department of English at Doctor Harisingh Gour University, Sagar, Madhya Pradesh, (India).

Contents include : Introduction : Rise and formation of the discipline of poetics; Literary theory and literary criticism : relationships and function; Issues and assumptions of criticism; English critical tradition. Part I : Classical Theory : Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Longinus. Part II : English Criticism : Sir Philip Sidney, Samuel Daniel, Francis Bacon, Ben Jonson, John Milton, John Dryden, John Dennis, Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison, Edward Young, Samuel Johnson, William Wordsworth, S.T. Cloeridge, P.B. Shelley, Mathew Arnold, Walter Horatio Pater, Lascelles Abercrombie, Virginia Woolf, F.R. Leavis, and T.S. Eliot.

This study attempts to show that only by taking due cognisance of the ideological dimensions of James’s emphasis on culture, we can hope to understand the particular coherence of his novels and make an objective assessment of his artistic achievement.
Contents : Conservative Liberalism: Basic Aspects • The Princess Casamassima: Civilization and Revolution • The Bostonians : Satire on Social Conditions • The Tragic Muse: Art and Politics.

The Marxist view of literature, which found expression through the works of Christopher Caudwell and other writers of his group, seems to have been consciously ignored or brushed aside as being merely “enthusiastic” and of no consequence by a majority of the critics and scholars. Concealed behind this apathy and indifference is an ideological hostility towards Marxism which became very fierce after the Second World War. This study aims at examining the specific theoretical contribution to the evolution of a radical literary perspective made by the Marxist critics in England from Christopher Caudwell to Arnold Kettle.

The present volume explains in simple terms some of the basic points that emerge during the reading of Wuthering Heights. It is meant primarily to meet the requirements of our graduate and post-graduate students. The author has tried to ensure that the complex and difficult aspects of the novel are not sacrificed for purposes of simplicity and elucidation. Explanations, therefore, remain open-ended and somewhat tentative. Thus, “Commentary on the Text,” the long first chapter of the book, is a commentary, a discussion, and not a “summary.” In fact, it would be better seen as an attempt to construct meaning with the help of clues that seem to be offered by the text. It is assumed that only such a discussion can prepare students and sensitive readers to evolve their individual responses to the work in question.

Adopting the middle path, between the labo-ured scholarly writing and the relaxed popular writing, the author has combined in this study the best qualities of both, namely, the correctness of scholarly work and the readability of the popular style. The book, to say the least, offers a fresh look on one of the best novels of a very great American writer.
Prof. Bhim S. Dahiya is Vice-Chancellor and Ex-Chairman, Faculty of English, Kurukshetra University, (India).