Stephen spender and mu Metha as social realists a comparative study

Abstract

The thesis undertakes the study of the thematic concerns in the poetry of Spender and Metha. The former is a poet of international reputation writing for the international audience and the latter a regional writer in Tamil writing for the Tamil readers. The study has been undertaken bearing in mind that the greatness of Metha can be brought out to the international literary arena if only he is compared to an author of international reputation. Though they are separated by a span of forty years, there is ample scope for a comparative study for they have dealt with similar themes in their poems. Both the poets under study have been deeply influenced by the members of their family, their literary contemporaries and the other writers, the various literary movements and the political and the sociological ideologies of their times. These influences have made them committed themselves for their respective contemporary societies which are infested with class divisions, exploitations, desperations and disappointments, poverty, unemployment and the like. Both the poets have used the various objects of nature to describe one aspect or other of human nature. They select a few objects of Nature and treat them for conveying their sociological concerns. Whereas Spender s approach is aesthetically-society-oriented, Metha totally society-oriented. While Spender reveals his fascination mainly for landscape, seascape, snow, blizzard and the like, Metha describes primarily the selfless services of trees in general. They employ them as their mouthpieces to speak for the suffering humanity. Both the poets have been directly or indirectly affected by the horror of war. While Spender lived in between the two global wars and personally witnessed the cruelties of the Spanish Civil War, Metha learned and heard about the woeful nature of the war victims of the Vietnam War, the Bangladesh War, the Kargil War and the War in Sree Lanka. Both the poets condemn war for the massive killings and the greatest loss it poses to human li