The Wisdom of Poets

by David Shulman

The essays collected here explore the central problems found in Sanskrit literature and in the classical literatures of south India. In this book, the author offers an innovative approach to the latent poetics of medieval poetry in Tamil and in Telugu, where the poet turns out to be very close to a magician or sorcerer, and the project of poetry is to induce or intensify the presence of God. Several essays deal with the theory of self and the organization of the internal world of imagination, forgetting, and memory in these classical literatures.This book will be welcomed by scholars and specialists of medieval south Indian and Sanskrit literature.

About the Author:

DAVID SHULMAN is Professor of Indian Studies and Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. His previous publications include God Inside Out: Siva's Game of Dice; A Poem at the Right Moment: Remembered Verses from Premodern South India; Tamil Temple Myths and The Hungry God.