Aniket Jaaware was one of the foremost intellectuals in the country and a much loved teacher of English Literature.
His teaching interests were broad ranging. Former students in Pune University still discuss his legendary classes on Hamlet and Paradise Lost. At SNU, he moved effortlessly between courses on poetry, science fiction and fantasy literature. The novels of J. R. R. Tolkein remained a life long interest and he’d pasted what he claimed was a fragment of the Elvish script on his office door!
Aniket combined the qualities that made him a beloved and highly respected teacher throughout his life with the stamina, scholarly rigor and conceptual daring characteristic of researchers of the highest quality. His 2001 book Simplifications was a cutting edge enterprise that showed generations of Indian students and scholars how the great conceptual breakthroughs of Saussure, Foucault, Lacan and Derrida could transform and rejuvenate their thinking.
Moreover, Aniket shared with some of the best scholars to come out of India, a quality that is quite rare in the rest of the world. He was as familiar with the details and nuances of his native (Marathi) literary culture as with the
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