Extreme Poetry

The South Asian Movement of Simultaneous Narration

Michael Bronner (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

376 Seiten

2010
Columbia University Press (Verlag)
978-0-231-15160-3 (ISBN)

Infos

Beginning in the sixth century C.E. and continuing for more than a thousand years, an extraordinary poetic practice was the trademark of a major literary movement in South Asia. Authors invented a special language to depict both the apparent and hidden sides of disguised or dual characters, and then used it to narrate India's major epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, simultaneously. Originally produced in Sanskrit, these dual narratives eventually worked their way into regional languages, especially Telugu and Tamil, and other artistic media, such as sculpture. Scholars have long dismissed simultaneous narration as a mere curiosity, if not a sign of cultural decline in medieval India. Yet Yigal Bronner's Extreme Poetry effectively negates this position, proving that, far from being a meaningless pastime, this intricate, "bitextual" technique both transcended and reinvented Sanskrit literary expression. The poems of simultaneous narration teased and estranged existing convention and showcased the interrelations between the tradition's foundational texts.
By focusing on these achievements and their reverberations through time, Bronner rewrites the history of Sanskrit literature and its aesthetic goals. He also expands on contemporary theories of intertextuality, which have been largely confined to Western texts and practices.

Autor

Yigal Bronner is an assistant professor in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. He is a Sanskritist trained at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at the University of Chicago. His research concerns Sanskrit poetry, Sanskrit poetics, and South Asian intellectual history.

Inhalt

Figures and Tables Acknowledgments A Note on Sanskrit Transliteration 1. Introduction 2. Experimenting with Slesa in Subandhu's Prose Lab 3. The Disguise of Language: Slesa Enters the Plot 4. Aiming at Two Targets: The Early Attempts 5. Bringing the Ganges to the Ocean: Kaviraja and the Apex of Bitextuality 6. Slesa as Reading Practice 7. Theories of Slesa in Sanskrit Poetics 8. Toward a Theory of Slesa Appendix 1: Bitextual and Multitextual Works in Sanskrit Appendix 2: Bitextual and Multitextual Works in Telugu Notes References Index

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 30.3.2010
• Reihe/Serie: South Asia Across the Disciplines
• Zusatzinfo: 3 illus; 6 tables
• Verlagsort: New York
• Sprache: englisch
• Maße: 152 x 229 mm
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Lyrik / Dramatik ► Lyrik / Gedichte
• ISBN-10: 0-231-15160-8 / 0231151608
• ISBN-13: 978-0-231-15160-3 / 9780231151603
• Zustand: Neuware