More Than Real: A History of the Imagination in South India - Rilegato

Shulman, David

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0674059913 ISBN 13: 9780674059917

Casa editrice: Harvard Univ Pr, 2021

Riassunto

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.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

A work of great learning, insight, and maturity. Shulman displays the pleasures that come with the reading of Indian literature as he works from the inside out to teach us what imagination is and what it entails. "More Than Real" is a tour de force that moves confidently through literary and religious texts and through South Indian languages, listening carefully to learn about something that we already care about, what imagination teaches us about ourselves and the world we live in. --Charles Hallisey, Harvard University

"The patient unravelling of the complex articulations of select Indian poets and commentators is the job that David Shulman has undertaken in this pioneering effort towards the production of a history of the imagination in South India. [...] For apart from advancing a thesis about early modern South India and the attainment there of a transfiguration comparable to the Italian Renaissance (which is keeping with much of his earlier work), Shulman interprets for us some of the major works of the pre-modern period [...]" --Rosinka Chaudhuri, Times Literary Supplement, 23/05/2013

L'autore:

David Shulman is Renee Lang Professor of Humanistic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Harvard Univ Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2021
• ISBN 10: 0674059913
• ISBN 13: 9780674059917
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 333