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'''Balachandra Rajan''' (March 24, 1920 – January 23, 2009<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=yswRuulQ-WcC&pg=PR5 Rajan, Tilottama – ''Romantic Narrative: Shelley, Hays, Godwin, Wollstonecraft'']</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=http://communications.uwo.ca/com/western_news/stories/western_mourns_loss_of_milton_scholar_20090128443590/|title=Western mourns loss of Milton scholar |date=January 28, 2009|work=Western News|publisher=University of Western Ontario|accessdate=2009-01-29}}</ref>) was an Indian diplomat and a scholar of poetry and [[poetics]].

==Life and career==

Focusing particularly on the poetry of [[John Milton]], Rajan was Professor Emeritus of [[English studies|English]] at the [[University of Western Ontario]] and
Rajan was Fellow of [[Trinity College, Cambridge]] from 1944–1948, but left England to return to his native India, where he served in the Indian Foreign Service until 1961. During that period he served on the Indian Delegation to the United Nations, working extensively with [[United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization|UNESCO]] and [[United Nations Children's Fund|UNICEF]], and chairing an international anti-[[malaria]] effort.<ref>{{cite news|title=U.N. Fund to Spur War on Malaria|date=March 5, 1955|work=The New York Times}}</ref> He served as Chairman of the UNICEF Executive Board from 1955 to 1956. Leaving his diplomatic career to return to academe, Rajan taught at the University of Delhi before emigrating to Canada to take up a position at the University of Western Ontario.<ref name="Tamburri">{{cite web|url=http://www.universityaffairs.ca/academic-dynasties.aspx |title=Academic Dynasties |last=Tamburri |first=Rosanna |date=November 8, 2004 |work=University Affairs |accessdate=2009-01-24 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20090808093341/http://www.universityaffairs.ca/academic-dynasties.aspx |archivedate=August 8, 2009 |df=mdy }}</ref>

Rajan's scholarly work covered a wide range of [[English poetry]], but returned frequently to Milton and particularly to Milton's ''[[Paradise Lost]]''. His work cannot be easily assigned to any [[literary criticism|critical methodology]]; he was a scholar of poetics in many forms and from many approaches. His 1947 book ''Paradise Lost and the Seventeenth Century Reader'' is primarily a response to Milton's apparent interest in [[Arianism]], considered a [[heresy]], and argues for a distinction between private and public meaning in Milton's poetry. The book was influential for [[William Empson]], particularly Empson's critique of strictly theological readings of ''Paradise Lost'', ''Milton's God''.<ref>{{cite book|last=Empson|first=William|title=Milton's God|url=https://archive.org/details/miltonsgod0000emps_p6w0|url-access=registration|publisher=Chatto and Windus|location=London|year=1965|edition=2nd|pages=[https://archive.org/details/miltonsgod0000emps_p6w0/page/34 34]–35}}</ref> Later essays explore what Rajan calls "[[genre|generic]] multeity" in ''Paradise Lost''.

In addition to his work on Milton, Rajan's later criticism addresses issues of [[Meaning (linguistic)|meaning]], [[intention]], and context in a broad array of writers including [[Edmund Spenser|Spenser]], [[William Butler Yeats|Yeats]], [[Andrew Marvell|Marvell]], [[John Keats|Keats]], and [[Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay|Macaulay]]. Rajan considered '[[poetry]] cannot report the event, it must be the event.'<ref>Rajan B., 'The Overwhelming Question:A study of the Poetry of T S Eliot' University of Toronto Press, Toronto 1976</ref>

Rajan also wrote two novels. ''The Dark Dancer'' is a sobering study of the conflicts of the [[Partition of India|Partition]];<ref>{{cite news|title=New Truths, Old Values|last=Morton|first=Frederic|date=June 29, 1958|work=The New York Times}}</ref> ''Too Long in the West'', on the other hand, is a more light-hearted satire (perhaps influenced by [[Rabindranath Tagore|Tagore]]'s ''Farewell, My Friend'') about a girl's return to her home village after an emancipating education in New York.<ref>{{cite news|title=Books of The Times: Too Long in the West|last=Poore|first=Charles|date=February 20, 1962|work=The New York Times}}</ref>

Rajan's daughter is the scholar and literary theorist [[Tilottama Rajan]], who also teaches at Western.<ref name="Tamburri"/>

==Critical Works==
*''Paradise Lost and the Seventeenth Century Reader''. London: Chatto and Windus, 1947. Reprinted Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967.
*''W.B.Yeats: A Critical Introduction''. London: Hutchinson University Library, 1965.
*''The Lofty Rhyme: A Study of Milton's Major Poetry''. London: Routledge, 1970.
*''The Overwhelming Question: A Study of the Poetry of T.S. Eliot''. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976.
*''The Form of the Unfinished: English Poetics from Spenser to Pound''. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.
*''Under Western Eyes: India from Milton to Macaulay''. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999.
*''Milton and the Climate of Reading: Essays''. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.

==Fiction==
*''The Dark Dancer''. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1958.
*''Too Long in the West''. New York: Atheneum, 1962.

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==

{{Wikiquote}}
{{Chairmen and Presidents of UNICEF}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rajan, Balachandra}}
[[Category:1920 births]]
[[Category:2009 deaths]]
[[Category:Indian literary critics]]
[[Category:Indian male novelists]]
[[Category:St. Stephen's College, Delhi alumni]]
[[Category:Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge]]
[[Category:University of Western Ontario faculty]]
[[Category:20th-century Indian novelists]]
[[Category:20th-century Indian male writers]]
[[Category:Indian officials of the United Nations]]
[[Category:Chairmen and Presidents of UNICEF]]

Balachandra Rajan - Revision history

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