Critique of Poetics (Set of Vol. 2)

Poetry and Poetics are integrally related. The former is an art based on emotions, whereas the latter is a science evaluating poetry. So long their common mode of treatment has been to excite in the mind the emotions appropriate to the subject-matter. But science and art are not identical. The former uses the “discursive” mode; and the latter the “presentational” mode. While science is “truth,” the art is adjectively “true”, i.e. it does not conflict with the truth.

The book Critique of Poetics is an extremely bold and far reaching attempt at a comprehensive theory of poetry. It starts with a Sound-Sense Continuum and ends with Quantum Poetics. The path of evolution is marked by the poetic process, the flow of Rasa, the flight of Pegasus, the dance of Resonons, the doctrine of suggestion, Rx for rhetoric, the logic of signs and symbols, the poetic imagery, the miracle of communication, the concept of criticism, style and stylistics, the law of inspiration and catharsis, the limits of art, the philosophy of beauty, East and West in Poetics, and the theory of literature. And this has been treated in a global perspective, which harmonizes both East and West in Poetics. A balance has also been struck between the two approaches to the study of literature—Extrinsic and Intrinsic. The former is characterized by psychology-society and other arts whereas the latter by style and stylistics, image and metaphor, rhetoric and suggestion, beauty and the like. A new theory of literature has been derived from these. This is born in a continuum of sound and sense, of space and time. It provides an organ of evaluating the past, present and future works of literature. In this context quantum poetics marks the end of the evolutionary process.

A.R. Biswas. M.A., LL.M., Ph.D., D. Litt. (Hon) is a scholar of varied taste. He has been a researcher in the fields of Law and Literature, Science and Philosophy, Religion and Psychology. The impulse to discover unity in diversity has led him to pastures fresh and new. A special trait of the author is the introduction of Mathematics in Law, Literature and Religion. This is illustrated by his Metrics of Philosophy (1970). His doctoral thesis, The Calculus of Poetics (1974), now christened Critique of Poetics and A Spiritual Calculus (1977).

Besides, the post-doctoral researches in various fields have added fresh laurels to his credit. They are The Owanth Nauth Dob Gold Medal, Ananderam Barooah Medal, Griffith Memorial Prize, Adwaita Malla Bevanan Memorial Award and others. It seems the author has taken all knowledge as his province. And his latest contributions are Poet-I-Metrixio (1998) and The Poetic Experience of Science (2001).