Devotional Poetics And The Indian Sublime

Book Summary

Studying European theories of the sublime particularly against contemporary critical uses of the term, the study maintains that the Brahman is one of the most fully developed sublimes. It analyses the relationship of a devotee, with his �God' when the latter is incapable of representation. The last two decades of the twentieth century have been marked by an immense revival of interest in the sublime, yet past studies have used Western texts as their archives. This book dramatically shifts the focus by examining a major instance of an Indian sublime: the Brahman. Mishra examines European theories of the sublime, reads them off against contemporary critical uses of the term (notably by Lyotard and Paul de Man) and proposes that the Hindu Brahman constitutes an instance of one of the most fully developed of all comprehensive theory of both the Indian sublime and Indian devotional verse. "The book offers a highly original interpretation of one fundamental problem in Indian cultural history: how does a devotee establish a relationship with God (Brahman) when God is ultimately incapable of representation? Mishra brilliantly exposes this problem by introducing the theme of the sublime and shows how the problem has been confronted across a range of central Hindu texts covering a large panorama of historical time and several Indic languages."

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