Dialectics of Freedom in Somerset Maugham

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About the Book The present appreciation intends to analyze Maugham's novels, essays and other writings from the dialectical perspective. It dialectically probes the consequence and extent to Man's incessant search for emancipation and its ultimate impact upon his materialistic leanings. It brings into focus how man while facing the odds of the modern living feels himself at loggerheads with the bizarre outside world. What is striking is that it characteristically delineates new meanings, contours and dimensions of human bondage that persist in the modern scientific paradise emphasizing man's lingering need to come up the mechanics of the mercantile society. As Maugham is a complete artist with a dialectical vision, his art and vision; his ethics and aesthetics and above all, his aspirations for attaining emancipation from the life of bondage, loneliness and alienation from the mainstream life, receive impetus from dialectical art. Maugham emphatically writes that the realistic cult of writing is no more relevant to address the issues emanating from the inadvertence and ambiguities of the scientific and the mercantile society. At the same time the book puts emphasis on Man's need to take into account the basic fact that instinctual patterns too play a significant role in the making of man.

Maugham has often been regarded as a writer in the naturalistic tradition. The present appreciation, instead, places Maugham in the dialectical tradition. For identifying Maugham merely as the Naturalistic writer is too simplistic to present his delineation of art in the correct perspective. Maugham is a critic of no lesser repute. In the writer's point of view, Fiction, says Maugham, is an art and the purpose of art is to please. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he opines that it is the element of pleasure that essentially makes reading enjoyable. Maugham aesthetically concentrates on the inertia of the self saying that 'I am only conscious to know what is in me is disagreeable to them'. The doctrine of the inner self is the inbuilt vehicle, which gives impetus to his characters to define the self in the bizarre outside world. Maugham is ranked along with Flaubert, Arnold Bennet, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce and Henry James keeping in view of the art of Flaubert, Shaw, Wells, Bennet, Eliot, W.B. Yeats, D.H. Lawrence, Conrad, Bertrand Russell and Spinoza, Maugham's art and literature have comprehensively been dealt with at length. Relevance of Somerset Maugham's art and literature will go on to move up millions of people with the turn of the new century.

About the Author Adibur Rahman is a freelance writer. He holds Ph.D. He has also done post graduation in Journalism and Mass Communication from Nalanda Open University, Patna. He has already contributed numerous articles on socio political and literary issues in the widely circulated journals and newspapers. His earlier work, which was entitled as "George Orwell: A Humanistic Perspective", was published under the Atlantic Publishers Script, New Delhi in 2002. He has immense interest in diverse areas of literature, particularly in British writing.

Preface Somerset Maugham's flair of writing naturalises all those scientific, mechanical and evolutionary processes Man has undergone in his bid to achieve emancipation from the centuries long suffering. Maugham with all his insight and clairvoyance dialectically envisages that the colossal growth of the scientific facts proved itself to be a pathetic fallacy. Maugham was a disillusioned realist who through his empathy could vividly see that the instrument of realism was no more feasible for projecting the whole panorama of man in the post modern era and that art had to be liberated from the cult of the realistic writing. With the emergence of the neo-industrial and mechanical society, there cropped up a ghastly civilization; the 'new' man emanated from the collocations of the scientific facts, says Maugham, feels himself alien in a society which no more caters to the aesthetic needs of the throbbing 'self'. As Maugham is an existentialist, he bifurcates between 'essence' and existence.

Introduction Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) is a post-war British novelist. With the emergence of the neo-meachanical order Maugham dialectically searches for new avenues of freedom. The suppression wreaked up by the man made social constraints, says Maugham impedes emancipation of man. He breaks new grounds for attainment of freedom in which man can define his self in the neo-meachnical society. As Shaw is a disillusioned romanticist, Maugham on the other hand, is a disillusioned realist who dialectically discerns that realism in is no more answer to the problems emanating from the post modern society. Shaw saw that root cause of human suffering lay in economic deprivation. Maugham instead says that the deep dungeons of poverty are themselves a part of the human consciousness. In his various writing, novels, stories and essays, he emphatically argues that experience too can become a stepping-stone of spritulsing the senses. Man says Maugham need not be bemused at the colossal growth of the scientific progress. In Of Human Bondage (1915) the metaphysics of love is realised in denying the attainment of happiness. Like D.H. Lawrence Maugham revels in unfolding the primitive, dark savage passions which in 'full throated ease', hold man in bondage. Maugham like Spinoza regards both good and evil as self-illusory.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages