Author: B G Gokhale
Publisher: Popular Prakashan
Year: 1992
Language: English
Pages: 112
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8171546625
Description
This book is a text of the three Heras memorial lectures delivered by B G Gokhale, an internationally known authority on Indian History and Civilization.
For centuries India has been viewed as a land of fantasy and mysticism and has left a very significant impact on the American image of the Oriental world. Indian Spirituality and Indian religious literature has always intrigued the Americans and led to the New England transcendentalist and T S Eliot to explore this exciting and yet strange phenomenon. The western Romantic movement led Americans to study Vedas/Upanishads and Philosophy and on the other hand American visitors merchants and missionaries emphasized on India's bizarre and fantastic life. This led to the emergence of two different sets of images of India.
The three sections of the book are divided into three broad periods.
1> The early period of the formation of the American tradition influenced by New England Transcendentalists like R W Emerson, Henry Thoreau and Walt Whitman
2> The work of Mark Twain, Katherine Mayo and T S Eliot etc.
3> The American images of post independence India through the works of Pearl s Buck, Kenneth Galbraith and Eleanor Roosevelt and others.