The Epic Muse: The Ramayana and Paradise Lost

Traditional literary genres are natural expressions of human experience of human experience. Thanks to specific social situations as well as to the human eternal, the same genres appear and develop independently in different cultures. Thus it happens that the  Tamil Ramayana of Kamban and Milton’s Paradise Lost, their diverse  literary traditions and features notwithstanding, are members of the same family, that of epics.  

The book makes a modest start by relating, in Chapter I. Kamban and Milton to their milieus and throwing light on the parallels between the two poet’s outlooks and their epics. Chapter II makes a brief and lucid study of the epic tradition- critical and creative. Indian and Western – in so far it is relevant to the subject. Thereafter, the author plunges into a comprehensive comparison of the two epics.