Race, milieu and moment : a contextual reading of the select poems of Nissim Ezekiel and Irving Layton

Abstract

The French critic Hippolyte Taine, while trying to establish a a scientific approach to literature through an investigation of what created the individual who created the work of art, propounded the concept that it was the race, milieu and moment that shaped the creative mind. By ìraceî Taine meant the inherited disposition or temperament of the poet; by ìmilieuî, he meant the circumstances or environment that modified the inherited racial disposition of the poet; and by ìmomentî, he meant the momentum of past and present cultural traditions.