Description
This volume critically explores the cultural significance and fate of the “literary” in the European and the Indian traditions as it traces the history of the reception of works that have had a deep hold on the lives and sensibilities of people across time and cultures.
The book grapples with three major concepts in the humanities—the literary, the philosophical/theological and the historical. It looks at Homer’s reception by Plato; Virgil’s reception by Christianity; the many responses that The Mahabharata has received over centuries and across cultures in India; and the reception of Kumaravyasa’s Kumaravyasabharata, among other works, and analyses the understanding of truth, time and history that influence the reading of these works in different times and cultural contexts.
Part of the Critical Humanities across Cultures series, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of philosophy, literature, history, comparative literature, cultural studies and post-colonial studies.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements x
Introduction: Sustaining Poetic Truth Across Cultures 1
1 From Rapture to Reason: The Literary as a Site of Truth From Homer to Hegel and Beyond 14
2 Kavya, Karma and Ananda: The Heterogeneity of Literary Ends in India 46
3 In Retrospect: Learning From Itihasa and History 77
4 Kavya-Itihasa of Kumaravyasa and the Many Lives of the Mahabharata 115
5 In-Conclusion: Listening for Literary Intimations Across Cultures 145
Index 156
