A Passage to India

Description:

Written over the course of ten years and two trips to India in the early 1900's, E.M. Forster's A Passage to India takes its tension from British Imperial rule in India and its subsequent upheaval and violence. Though critical of Britain's policy and sympathetic to the Indian cause and culture, the novel transcends mere historical account due to its modernist sensibilities and challenge to traditional western spirituality. Early criticism reflected particular attention to the novel's politics. More recently critics examined structure, homoerotic overtones, its place in Forster's body of work, and the Indian response to the novel. The last section of A Passage to India departs from the standard practices of literary modernism, but it does so only to re-formulate under the guise of Hindu mysticism a regressive providentialism wherein a transcendental Being presides over narrative events and Nothingis left to chance. VIVA MODERN CRITICAL INTERPRETATIONS presents the best current criticism on the most widely read and studied poems, novels and dramas of the Western world, from Oedipus Rex and the Iliad to such modern and contemporary works as William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and Don Delillo's White Noise.

Target Audience:

Students of Literature, English Departments & Libraries.