Buddhist Poetry and Colonialism
Alagiyavanna and the Portuguese in Sri Lanka
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Product details:
- Publisher OUP USA
- Date of Publication 7 March 2013
- ISBN 9780199935765
- Binding Hardback
- No. of pages336 pages
- Size 163x236x22 mm
- Weight 607 g
- Language English 0
Categories
Short description:
Buddhist Poetry and Colonialism examines five works by the poet Alagiyavanna to demonstrate how Buddhism in Sri Lanka was transformed by the encounters with Portuguese colonialism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
MoreLong description:
Stephen C. Berkwitz's Buddhist Poetry and Colonialism examines five works by a single poet to demonstrate how Buddhism in Sri Lanka was shaped and transformed by encounters with Portuguese colonizers and missionaries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By following the written works of Alagiyavanna Mukaveti (1552-1625?) from the court of a powerful Sinhala king through the cultural upheavals of warfare and Christian missions and finally to his eventual conversion to Catholicism and employment under the Portuguese Crown, this book uses the poetry of a single author to reflect upon how Sinhala verse fashioned new visions of power and religious identity when many of the traditional Buddhist institutions were in retreat.
Berkwitz traces the development of Alagiyavanna's poetry as a medium for celebrating the fame of rulers, devotion to the Buddha and his Dharma, morality and truth in the Buddha's religion, and the glories of Portuguese rule in Sri Lanka. Employing an interdisciplinary approach that combines Buddhist Studies, History, Literary Criticism, and Postcolonial Studies, the author constructs a picture of the effects of colonialism on Buddhist literature and culture at an early juncture in the history of the encounter between Asia and Europe.
This is a valuable complement to our understanding of Sri Lanka's experience of the first wave of European imperialism. Berkwitz's analysis of the poems of Alagiyavanna offers English-readers a rare glimpse of a Sinhalese perspective on this fascinating and turbulent period in Sri Lankan history, and the corresponding shifts in sensibility the poet must undergo as the political and religious landscape alters around him.
Table of Contents:
Preface
Map
Timeline
Chapter 1 - Buddhist Literature and Culture in Early Modern Ceil?o
Chapter 2 - The Aesthetics of Power and The Cock's Message
Chapter 3 - Longing for the Dharma in Poem of King Dhammasonda
Chapter 4 - On Love and Kingship in Poem of the Birth-story of King Kusa
Chapter 5 - Admonishing the World with Well-Spoken Words
Chapter 6 - Identity and Hybridity in War of General Constantino
Conclusion - Poetry and Buddhism
Bibliography
Index
