KOLKATA: Is literature created just to entertain, or should it be studied in depth, keeping an eye out for its literary scope and style? What is modernity in the realm of literature or social sciences?These were some thoughts that were thrown up by leading scholars of English literature in the city, such as Swapan Chakravorty and Amit Chaudhuri, as they delivered special lectures at the bicentenary celebrations of Presidency on Monday. The session was chaired by linguist and Esperanto expert Probal Dasgupta.Chakravorty spoke on 'Facts, Finance and Fiction - Literary Studies and Higher Education', and went on to explain why, for a very long time in higher education, literature was not accepted as a serious subject in the same way that language, maths and philosophy were since the classical times. He explained the importance of literary criticism that has enriched the vast body of creative writing and compared it to art, punctuating the thought with the question that any art should have a civic value attached to it.Chaudhuri said the dividing line between critical and creative writing was blurring, and was no longer productive. He said the definition of literature had gone through many twists and turns as writers like D H Lawrence and T S Eliot tried to explain it through their own respective sensibilities.He explained the concept of modernity and clarified that modernism might not be modernity. "It is strange that we talk in terms of postcolonialism when it comes to Indian literature. But modernity does not necessarily mean that," Chaudhuri argued.

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