The Poetics of Devotion

The Poetics of Devotion
Author: Rachel Dwyer
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2001
Genre: Gujarati literature
ISBN: 9780700712335

This text introduces a major poet scarcely known to scholars outside Gujarat in India: Kavi Dayarambhai (1777-1852), and analyses the poet's place in the history of Indian literature.

Songs of Experience

Songs of Experience
Author: Norman Cutler
Publisher: Religion in Asia and Africa
Total Pages: 232
Release: 1987
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN:

"... a significant contribution to the field... great insight, learning, and clarity." -- George Hart III, University of California, Berkeley"A master's hand is behind this volume." -- Religious Studies Review"... eminently readable... artfully explains the initial spirit and modern understanding of Tamil bhakti poetry... " -- Pacific Affairs"Norman Cutler's major achievement in Songs of Experience is the new critical perspective he provides on bhakti poetry." -- The Journal of ReligionCutler reveals the link between Tamil poetry and religion. His fluent translations make the poems -- songs of the experience of God -- live for us as they did for their first audience nearly fifteen centuries ago.

Devotion

Devotion
Author: Patti Smith
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 106
Release: 2017-01-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0300218621

"In lyric essays, a story, poems, and photographs, Smith illuminates the whirl of chance and choice that stokes a writer's imagination, recounting her fascination on the eve of a trip to Paris with Simone Weil and an evocative, accidentally discovered film about Stalin's mass deportation of Estonians. In France, a gravestone, a televised figure-skating competition, a meal, and a garden all converge in what becomes Devotion, [a] ... fairy tale about a young, displaced Estonian skater and a solitary dealer in rare objects and arms. This ... fable about creativity and obsession, possession and freedom is followed by a meditation on how a work of art is, for other artists, a call to action"--Booklist, 08/01/2017.

Devotion

Devotion
Author: Constance M. Furey
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2021-12-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0226816125

"What brings religious scholars Constance Furey, Sarah Hammerschlag, and Amy Hollywood together in Devotion is a shared conviction that "reading helps us live with and through the unknown." For them, the nature of reading raises questions fundamental to how we think about our political futures and modes of human relation. Each essay suggests different ways to characterize the object of devotion and the stance of the devout subject before it. Furey writes about devotion in terms of vivification, energy, and artifice; Hammerschlag in terms of commentary, mimicry, and fetishism; and Hollywood in terms of anarchy, antinomianism, and atopia. They are interested in literature not as providing models for ethical, political, or religious life, but as creating the site in which the possible-and the impossible-transport the reader, enabling new forms of thought, habits of mind, and modes of life. Ranging from German theologian Martin Luther to French-Jewish philosopher Sarah Kofman to American poet Susan Howe, this volume is not just a reflection on forms of devotion, it is also an enactment of devotion itself"--

Religious Devotion and the Poetics of Reform

Religious Devotion and the Poetics of Reform
Author: George Pati
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2019-02-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1351103598

The poetry emanating from the bhakti tradition of devotional love in India has been both a religious expression and a form of resistance to hierarchies of caste, gender, and colonialism. Some scholars have read this art form through the lens of resistance and reform, but others have responded that imposing an interpretive framework on these poems fails to appreciate their authentic expressions of devotion. This book argues that these declarations of love and piety can simultaneously represent efforts towards emancipation at the spiritual, political, and social level. This book, through a close study of Naḷini (1911), a Malayalam lyric poem, as well as other poems, authored by Mahākavi Kumāran Āśān (1873–1924), a low-caste Kerala poet, demonstrates how Āśān employed a theme of love among humans during the modern period in Kerala that was grounded in the native South Indian bhakti understanding of love of the deity. Āśān believed that personal religious freedom comes from devotion to the deity, and that love for humans must emanate from love of the deity. In showing how devotional religious expression also served as a resistance movement, this study provides new perspective on an understudied area of the colonial period. Bringing to light an under-explored medium, in both religious and artistic terms, this book will be of great interest to scholars of religious studies, Hindu studies, and religion and literature, as well as academics with an interest in Indian culture.

Poetic Theology

Poetic Theology
Author: William A. Dyrness
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2011
Genre: Art
ISBN: 080286578X

What are the poetics of everyday life ? What can they teach us about God? Art, music, dance, and writing can certainly be poetic, but so can such diverse pastimes as fishing, skiing, or attending sports events. Any and all activities that satisfy our fundamental need for play, for celebration, and for ritual, says William Dyrness, are inherently poetic and in Poetic Theology he demonstrates that all such activities are places where God is active in the world. All of humanity s creative efforts, Dyrness points out, testify to our intrinsic longing for joy and delight and our deep desire to connect with others, with the created order, and especially with the Creator. This desire is rooted in the presence and calling of God in and through the good creation. With extensive reflection on aesthetics in spirituality, worship, and community development, Dyrness s Poetic Theology will be useful for all who seek fresh and powerful new ways to communicate the gospel in contemporary society. William Dyrness s bold invitation to a poetic theology shaped by Scripture, tradition, and imagination one luring us toward a fuller participation in beauty than argument or concept alone allow reminds us that truth itself is beautiful to behold and poetic to the core. . . . If poetry is in its deepest reflex an intensification of life, then Dyrness s call for a poetic theology is one we ignore at our peril, reminding us that faithful living is not only about proper thinking but also and, perhaps, more properly about the texture of our living and the quality of our loving. Mark S. Burrows Andover Newton Theological School Makes a strong case for aesthetics as one of the avenues used by God to draw human beings near to him and his glory. . . . A wonderful journey through Reformed spirituality and a wake-up call for Reformed theology. Cornelius van der Kooi Free University, Amsterdam

Devotional Poetics and the Indian Sublime

Devotional Poetics and the Indian Sublime
Author: Vijay Mishra
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 1998-08-06
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780791438725

Combines Western theories of the sublime (from Longinus to Lyotard) with indigenous Indian modes of reading in order to construct a comprehensive theory of both the Indian sublime and Indian devotional verse.

The Flower of Paradise

The Flower of Paradise
Author: David J. Rothenberg
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2011-09-14
Genre: Music
ISBN: 019987557X

There is a striking similarity between Marian devotional songs and secular love songs of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Two disparate genres--one sacred, the other secular; one Latin, the other vernacular--both praise an idealized, impossibly virtuous woman. Each does so through highly stylized derivations of traditional medieval song forms--Marian prayer derived from earlier Gregorian chant, and love songs and lyrics from medieval courtly song. Yet despite their obvious similarities, the two musical and poetic traditions have rarely been studied together. Author David J. Rothenberg takes on this task with remarkable success, producing a useful and broad introduction to Marian music and liturgy, and then coupling that with an incisive comparative analysis of these devotional forms and the words and music of secular love songs of the period. The Flower of Paradise examines the interplay of Marian devotional and secular poetics within polyphonic music from ca. 1200 to ca. 1500. Through case studies of works that demonstrate a specific symbolic resonance between Marian devotion and secular song, the book illustrates the distinctive ethos of this period in European culture. Rothenberg makes use of an impressive command of liturgical and religious studies, literature and poetry, and art history to craft a study with wide application across disciplinary boundaries. With its broad scope and unique, incisive analysis, this book will open up new ways of thinking about the history and development of secular and sacred music and the Marian tradition for scholars, students, and anyone with an interest in medieval and Renaissance religious culture.

Materiality and Devotion in the Poetry of George Herbert

Materiality and Devotion in the Poetry of George Herbert
Author: Francesca Cioni
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2024-01-11
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0198874405

This book uses textual and material evidence -- in poetry, prayers, physiologies, sermons, church buildings and monuments, manuscript diaries and notebooks -- to explore how material things held spiritual meaning in George Herbert's poetry, and to reflect on scholarly approaches to matter and form in devotional poetry.