Balachandra Rajan, a scholar of poetry and poetics, focusing particularly on the poetry of John Milton, is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Western Ontario. Bust of Homer, one of the earliest European poets, in the British Museum Poetry (ancient Greek: ποιεω (poieo) = I create) is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. ... Poetics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... John Milton John Milton (December 9, 1608 – November 8, 1674) was an English poet, most famous for his blank verse epic Paradise Lost. ... In literary criticism, the term English studies is occasionally used to refer to the critical study of English literature. ... The University of Western Ontario is a public, non-denominational university located in London, Ontario, Canada. ...

He was Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge from 1944–1948, but left England to return to his native India, where he served in the Indian Foreign Service until 1961. During that period he served on the Indian Delegation to the United Nations, working extensively with UNESCO and UNICEF. Leaving his diplomatic career to return to academe, Rajan taught at the University of New Delhi (now Jawaharlal Nehru University) before emigrating to Canada to take up a position at the University of Western Ontario. Full name The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity Motto Virtus vera nobilitas Virtue is true Nobility Named after The Holy Trinity Previous names Kings Hall and Michaelhouse (until merged in 1546) Established 1546 Sister College Christ Church Master Sir Martin Rees Location Trinity Street Undergraduates 656 Graduates... 1944 was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1948 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... Royal motto: Dieu et mon droit (French: God and my right) Englands location within the UK Official language English de facto Capital London de facto Largest city London Area  - Total Ranked 1st UK 130,395 km² Population  - Total (2001)  - Density Ranked 1st UK 49,138,831 377/km² Ethnicity... 1961 was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... The United Nations, or UN, is an international organization established in 1945 and now made up of 191 states. ... UNESCO logo The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, commonly known as UNESCO, is a specialized agency of the United Nations system established in 1946. ... UNICEF logo The United Nations International Childrens Emergency Fund (UNICEF) was established by the United Nations General Assembly on December 11, 1946. ... Jawaharlal Nehru University is located in New Delhi, the capital of India. ...

Rajan's scholarly work covers a wide range of English poetry, but has returned frequently to Milton and particularly to Milton's Paradise Lost. He cannot be easily assigned to any critical methodology, but is instead a scholar of poetics in many forms and from many approaches. His 1947 book Paradise Lost and the Seventeenth Century Reader is primarily a response to Milton's apparent interest in Arianism, considered a heresy, and argues for a distinction between private and public meaning in Milton's poetry. The book was influential for William Empson, particularly Empson's critique of strictly theological readings of Paradise Lost, Milton's God. Later essays explore what Rajan calls "generic multeity" in Paradise Lost. In addition to his work on Milton, Rajan's later criticism addresses issues of meaning, intention, and context in a broad array of writers including Spenser, Yeats, Marvell, Keats, and Macaulay. William Shakespeare is regarded as one of the greatest English poets ever. ... Cover to the first edition Paradise Lost (1667) is an epic poem by the 17th century English poet John Milton. ... Literary criticism is the study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. ... 1947 was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Arianism was a Christological view held by followers of Arius in the early Christian Church, claiming that Jesus Christ and God the Father were not always contemporary, seeing the Son as a divine being, created by the Father (and consequently inferior to Him) at some point in time, before which... Heresy, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is a theological or religious opinion or doctrine maintained in opposition, or held to be contrary, to the ‘catholic’ or orthodox doctrine of the Christian Church, or, by extension, to that of any church, creed, or religious system, considered as orthodox. ... William Empson Sir William Empson (1906-1984) was an English poet and literary critic, and former head of the Sheffield University English department. ... A genre is any of the traditional divisions of art forms from a single field of activity into various kinds according to criteria particular to that form. ... Meaning is what symbols that provoke some kind of thought or denote some entity, have in common. ... The word intention admits a variety of meanings: Purpose is thoughtful and deliberate goal-directedness -- thus intentional behavior. ... ConTEXT is a freeware text editor directed at programmers. ... Though anyone who creates a written work may be called a writer, the term is usually reserved for those who write creatively or professionally, or those who have written in many different forms. ... Edmund Spenser Edmund Spenser (c. ... William Butler Yeats (June 13, 1865 – January 28, 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, mystic and public figure. ... Andrew Marvell (March 31, 1621 – August 16, 1678) was an English metaphysical poet, and the son of an Anglican clergyman. ... John Keats John Keats (October 31, 1795 – February 23, 1821) was one of the principal poets in the English Romantic movement. ... Quotes His imagination resembled the wings of an ostrich. ...

Rajan has also written two novels. The Dark Dancer is a sobering study of the conflicts of the Partition; Too Long in the West, on the other hand, is a more light-hearted satire (perhaps influenced by Tagore's Farewell, My Friend) about a girl's return to her home village after an emancipating education in New York. The Partition of India was the process by which British dependencies and treaty states in the Indian subcontinent were granted independence in the 1940s. ... Rabindranath Tagore Rabindranath Tagore (Bangla: রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর, Robindronath Ţhakur) (May 7, 1861 - August 7, 1941) (in the Bangla Calendar, 25 Baishakh, 1268 - 22 Srabon, 1348), also called Gurudev, was a Bengali poet, Brahmo philosopher and nationalist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913, becoming the first Asian to win...

Critical Works

• Paradise Lost and the Seventeenth Century Reader. London: Chatto and Windus, 1947. Reprinted Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967.
• W.B.Yeats: A Critical Introduction. London: Hutchinson University Library, 1965.
• The Lofty Rhyme: A Study of Milton's Major Poetry. London: Routledge, 1970.
• The Overwhelming Question: A Study of the Poetry of T.S. Eliot. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976.
• The Form of the Unfinished: English Poetics from Spenser to Pound. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.
• Under Western Eyes: India from Milton to Macaulay. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999.

Fiction

• The Dark Dancer. New York: Simon and Schuster,1958.
• Too Long in the West. New York: Atheneum, 1962.