Shakespeare and Donne: Themes of Love, Time and Mutability (Hardbound - 2010)

Both Shakespeare and Donne explore the strength of love against the ineluctable forces of time and mutability in their individual ways, and seem to reach the conclusion that the tyranny of time can yet be mitigated, even overcome by the death-defying intransigence of love. Shakespeare’s and Donne’s vision of love in their works is stamped with the mark of their genius, especially in their departure from the conventional treatment and in their own realistic approach to love vis-à-vis time. The book explores the full spectrum of Shakespeare’s and Donne’s treatment of love, time and mutability with the aid of insight derived from existing scholarship and criticism.

In a world that is fast becoming a global village with technological advancement and sharp competition for survival, the essential aspects of humanity disintegrating fast and traditional values reduced to commodities—a world not unlike which Shakespeare and Donne knew—a fresh look at their individual responses to unsympathetic forces need not be ruled out as a source of new aspiration and regeneration of those values which saves mankind from self-annihilation.

The book will prove useful to the students and teachers of English literature. It will also benefit researchers in English literature, particularly Shakespeare and Donne.

R. Thangvunga, Ph.D. from North-Eastern Hill University, taught English for thirty years at Government Aizawl College as Reader and Head of the English Department, and was Principal of T. Romana College, Aizawl, before he joined the Department of Mizo at Mizoram University where he now teaches English literature. R. Thangvunga has made significant contribution to the teaching of Mizo literature. His translation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night in Mizo is presently one of the texts for Mizo Honours in B.A.