Arguments of Heart and Mind: Selected Essays 1977-2000

About the Book

Amitav Ghosh is an authoritative critical introduction to the fictional and non-fictional writings of one of the most celebrated and significant literary voices to have emerged from India in recent decades. It is the first full-length study of Amitav Ghosh's work to be available outside India.

Encompassing all of Ghosh's fictional and non-fictional writings to date, this book takes a thematic approach which enables in-depth analysis of the cluster of themes, ideas and issues that Ghosh has steadily built up into a substantial intellectual project. This project overlaps significantly with many of the key debates in postcolonial studies and so this book is both an introduction to Ghosh's writing and a contribution to the development of ideas on the 'postcolonial' - in particular, its relation to postmodernism.

Amitav Ghosh is for students and teachers of postcolonial literatures in English at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

Table of Contents:
Part one - Poetry and women's traditions: In her own image - feminism and poetry (1982); In their own images - a bibliographical afterword (2000); Shining pins and wailing shells - women poets and the Great War (1991); "Undeservedly forgotten" - women poets of the 1930s (1994); "What words say" - three women poets reading H. D. (1988). Part two - Writers and readings: Edgell Rickword - an exchange (with Alan Munton) (1998); Day and night in Kipling (1978); Listening to Minna - realism, feminism and the poetics of reading; Sylvia Townsend Warner, authority and the biographer"s "moral sense"; A wise poet - D. J. Enright; Aurora Leigh and the Pure Milk of the Word; "Nothing to do with eternity?" Adrienne Rich, feminism and poetry. Part three - Culture and feminist theory: Mirror writing - a dialogue; The fourth form girls go camping - sexual identity and ambivalence in girls' school stories; On not being "timid with butchers" - Elizabeth David and the classic English cookery book; Defining the feminine self; Thinking about mothers. Part one - Poetry and women's traditions 1. In her own image - feminism and poetry (1982) 2. In their own images - a bibliographical afterword (2000) 3. Shining pins and wailing shells - women poets and the Great War (1991) 4. 'Undeservedly forgotten' - women poets of the 1930s (1994) 5. 'What words say' - three women poets reading H. D. (1988) Part two. Writers and readings 6. Edgell Rickword - an exchange (with Alan Munton) (1998) 7. Day and night in Kipling (1978) 8. Listening to Minna - realism, feminism and the poetics of reading 9. Sylvia Townsend Warner, authority and the biographer's 'moral sense' 10. A wise poet - D. J. Enright 11. Aurora Leigh and the Pure Milk of the Word 12. 'Nothing to do with eternity?' Adrienne Rich, feminism and poetry Part three. Culture and feminist theory 13. Mirror writing - a dialogue 14. The fourth form girls go camping - sexual identity and ambivalence in girls' school stories 15. On not being 'timid with butchers' - Elizabeth David and the classic English cookery book 16. Defining the feminine self 17. Thinking about mothers