Disorienting dharma : ethics and the aesthetics of suffering in the mahābhārata / Emily T. Hudson.
2013
BL1138.26 .H83 2013 (Mapit)
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Details
Title
Disorienting dharma : ethics and the aesthetics of suffering in the mahābhārata / Emily T. Hudson.
Author
Hudson, Emily T.
ISBN
9780199860784 paperback alkaline paper
0199860785 paperback alkaline paper
9780199860760 hardcover alkaline paper
0199860769 hardcover alkaline paper
0199860785 paperback alkaline paper
9780199860760 hardcover alkaline paper
0199860769 hardcover alkaline paper
Publication Details
New York : Oxford University Press, c2013.
Language
English
Description
viii, 268 p. ; 24 cm.
Call Number
BL1138.26 .H83 2013
Dewey Decimal Classification
294.5/923046
Summary
"This book explores the relationship between ethics, aesthetics, and religion in classical Indian literature and literary theory by focusing on one of the most celebrated and enigmatic texts to emerge from the Sanskrit epic tradition, the Mahabharata. This text, which is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important sources for the study of South Asian religious, social, and political thought, is a foundational text of the Hindu tradition(s) and considered to be a major transmitter of dharma (moral, social, and religious duty), perhaps the single most important concept in the history of Indian religions. However, in spite of two centuries of Euro-American scholarship on the epic, basic questions concerning precisely how the epic is communicating its ideas about dharma and precisely what it is saying about it are still being explored. Disorienting Dharma brings to bear a variety of interpretive lenses (Sanskrit literary theory, reader-response theory, and narrative ethics) to examine these issues. One of the first book-length studies to explore the subject from the lens of Indian aesthetics, it argues that such a perspective yields startling new insights into the nature of the depiction of dharma in the epic through bringing to light one of the principle narrative tensions of the epic: the vexed relationship between dharma and suffering. In addition, it seeks to make the Mahabharata interesting and accessible to a wider audience by demonstrating how reading the Mahabharata, perhaps the most harrowing story in world literature, is a fascinating, disorienting, and ultimately transformative experience." -- Publisher's description.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Series
AAR religion in translation.
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Table of Contents
Aesthetics of suffering in the mahābhārata
Implicit literary theory of the mahābhārata
Dharma and rupture in the game of dice
Eyesight of insight: dhtarara and moral blindness
Time that ripens and rots all creatures
Heaven's riddles or the hell trick: Theodicy and narrative strategies
Dharma and suffering.
Implicit literary theory of the mahābhārata
Dharma and rupture in the game of dice
Eyesight of insight: dhtarara and moral blindness
Time that ripens and rots all creatures
Heaven's riddles or the hell trick: Theodicy and narrative strategies
Dharma and suffering.