Pradeep Sharma — Jain Vishva Bharati, Lucknow

Indian ‘poetics and theories of meaning’ is a highly developed philosophy of artistic interpretation, especially literary compositions in verse. The function of art and its relation to human emotions has been effectively mapped out by Indian thinkers and more importantly, their formulations are as valid in literary criticism as are the postmodernist/poststructuralist literary theories or psychoanalysis or post-colonialist interpretations of literary texts. But it is felt that although what Indian literary thinkers have propounded impinges on the psychological domain too, still there is a need to investigate afresh what may have been their ideas with reference to literary productions and the human mind. The present paper makes an attempt to look into the psychology of Indian literature a little more closely in the light of contemporary thought on the influence of modern psychology on literary interpretations.