Monography profile

In the Western world we are used to think that discourse on the nature of literature began with Plato and Aristotle, and continued through Longinus, the neo-Classical thinkers, the Romantics, and culminated in the 20th century with a multitude of literary theories. However, there have been traditions of thinking about literature in India, China and the Arab world even before European colonization. The most ancient and systematic thinking about literature can be found in India. Whereas Western literary studies are dominated by reflection on the propositional meaning of literary texts, Sanskrit literary studies focused on the experience of emotions. The current emotion research shows that the observations of Sanskrit theorists were insightful and may have a more general significance outside of the literature on which they are based. The book offers an introduction to Sanskrit literary theories and an evaluation of their contribution to the discourse of current Western literary studies.