Girish Karnad : Poetics and Aesthetics

Contents: Preface. 1. Introduction. 2. Yayati. 3. NagaMandala. 4. The Fire and the Rain. 5. Bali: The sacrifice. Bibliography. Index.

This book, apart the inclusion of introduction, consists of four chapters and total nine subtitles out of the four core chapters. Girish Karnad as a playwright envisages the dramatics and theatrics of Natyasastra by which he makes an application to the theatrics of poetics and aesthetics. The suggestive pattern as the tranperlnalization and universalization of the emotional response and social values give birth to an emotional intensity for the realization of the aesthetic experience of literature. Karnad makes the use of myths, symbols, metaphors and folkforistic devices for displaying the causative effects. Myth as palimpsest constructs and re-constructs the new meanings apart from the inherent connotations in it. The two plays such as yayati and The Fire and the Rain are based on the myths of The Mahabharata. The myths of Yayati and Yavakri are so worked out as they evince the complicated world of human relationships, aesthetics. Bali: The Sacrifice is based in the myth of Cock of Dough and myth is so operated in the text as it revelas the dialectics of socioentric referents and the de-ethnocentralized values of two religions, the tantric principles of Hinduism and the non-violence of Jainism. In Naga-Mandala, the dramatist uses the metaphor of Naga (serpent) for showing forces, human being and reptile. Written with the clarity of perception, the book in the present format will prove interesting and useful to both the students and scholars alike.