Michael Madhusudan Dutt Critical Essay | Critical Essay by William Radice

Critical Essay by William Radice

SOURCE: Radice, William. “Milton and Madhusudan.” In Literature East and West: Essays Presented to R. K. DasGupta, edited by G. R. Taneja and Vinod Sena, pp. 177-94. New Delhi: Allied Publishers Limited, 1995.

In the following essay, Radice compares Dutt's The Slaying of Meghanada with John Milton's Paradise Lost.

Michael Madhusudan Datta (1824-73) was not as great a poet as John Milton. As an Englishman, I can say this without fear of apparent condescension, for Madhusudan himself would have agreed. In his flamboyant English letters, we find that the only limit to his ambition and self-confidence was set by Milton. After the publication, in 1861, of the first two books of Meghnād-badh Kābya, he wrote to his friend Rajnarayan Basu:

The Poem is rising into splendid popularity. Some say it is better than Milton—but that is all bosh—nothing can be better than Milton; many say it licks Kalidasa; I have...
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