Title
More than Real : A History of the Imagination in South India / David Shulman.
ISBN
9780674065123
Published
Cambridge, MA : : Harvard University Press, [2012]
Copyright
©2012
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource (352 p.)
Item Number
10.4159/harvard.9780674065123 doi
Call Number
BF408 .S4518 2012
Dewey Decimal Classification
153.30954
Summary
From the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, the major cultures of southern India underwent a revolution in sensibility reminiscent of what had occurred in Renaissance Italy. During this time, the imagination came to be recognized as the defining feature of human beings. More than Real draws our attention to a period in Indian history that signified major civilizational change and the emergence of a new, proto-modern vision.In general, India conceived of the imagination as a causative agent: things we perceive are real because we imagine them. David Shulman illuminates this distinctiveness and shows how it differed radically from Western notions of reality and models of the mind. Shulman's explication offers insightful points of comparison with ancient Greek, medieval Islamic, and early modern European theories of mind, and returns Indology to its rightful position of intellectual relevance in the humanities.At a time when contemporary ideologies and language wars threaten to segregate the study of pre-modern India into linguistic silos, Shulman demonstrates through his virtuoso readings of important literary works-works translated lyrically by the author from Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam-that Sanskrit and the classical languages of southern India have been intimately interwoven for centuries.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 18. Sep 2023)
Available in Other Form
print 9780674059917
Frontmatter
Contents
Preface
Part I. Theorizing Imagination
1. Mind-Born Worlds
2. Poets, Playwrights, Painters
3. Singularity, Inexhaustibility, Insight: What Sanskrit Poeticians Think Is Real
4. Poetics 2: Illumination
5. Toward a Yoga of the Imagination
Part II. The Sixteenth-Century Revolution
6. Early Modern Bhāvanā
7. Sīmantinī: Irrevocable Imaginings
8. Nala in Tenkasi and the New Economy of Mind
9. True Fiction
10. The Marriage of Bhāvanā and Best
11. Toward Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index