SOURCE: Seely, Clinton B. “Homeric Similes, Occidental and Oriental: Tasso, Milton, and Bengal's Michael Madhusudan Dutt.” Comparative Literature Studies 25, no. 1 (1988): 35-56.

In the following essay, Seely analyzes The Slaying of Meghanada, focusing on the portrayal of Ravana and comparing it with Milton's sympathetic portrayal of Satan in Paradise Lost.

Based on an episode from the Ramayana, Michael Madhusudan Dutt's epic poem The Slaying of Meghanada (meghanadavadha kavya) recounts in nine cantos the death of the great Raksasa warrior and son of Ravana at the hands of Rama's younger brother Laksmana. An examination of Dutt's creative use of epic material is best introduced by way of a cursory look at primary epic literature and its place in society. The Iliad and the Odyssey, products of a pagan culture, tend to be regarded by the Judeo-Christian Occident as cultural documents or as works of creative literature devoid of currently relevant...