Guru English

South Asian Religion in a Cosmopolitan Language
Erscheinungsjahr 2005
ISBN: 978-0-691-11828-4
Verlag: Princeton University Press

Buch, Englisch, 336 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 565 g

Reihe: Translation/Transnation

Guru English is a bold reconceptualization of the scope and meaning of cosmopolitanism, examining the language of South Asian religiosity as it has flourished both inside and outside of its original context for the past two hundred years. The book surveys a specific set of religious vocabularies from South Asia that, Aravamudan argues, launches a different kind of cosmopolitanism into global use. Using "Guru English" as a tagline for the globalizing idiom that has grown up around these religions, Aravamudan traces the diffusion and transformation of South Asian religious discourses as they shuttled between East and West through English-language use. The book demonstrates that cosmopolitanism is not just a secular Western "discourse that results from a disenchantment with religion, but something that can also be refashioned from South Asian religion when these materials are put into dialogue with contemporary social move-ments and literary texts. Aravamudan looks at "religious forms of neoclassicism, nationalism, Romanticism, postmodernism, and nuclear millenarianism, bringing together figures such as Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, Mahatma Gandhi, and Deepak Chopra with Rudyard Kipling, James Joyce, Robert Oppenheimer, and Salman Rushdie.Guru English analyzes writers and gurus, literary texts and religious movements, and the political uses of religion alongside the literary expressions of religious teachers, showing the cosmopolitan interconnections between the Indian subcontinent, the British Empire, and the American New Age.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Aravamudan, Srinivas

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Sprachsoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Religionssoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionssoziologie und -psychologie, Spiritualität, Mystik
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Einzelne Sprachen & Sprachfamilien
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Soziolinguistik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Chapter One: Theolinguistics: Orientalists, Brahmos, Vedantins, and Yogis 26 Chapter Two: From Indian Romanticism to Guru Literature 63 Chapter Three: Theosophistries 105 Chapter Four: The Hindu Sublime, or Nuclearism Rendered Cultural 142 Chapter Five: Blasphemy, Satire, and Secularism 184 Chapter Six: New Age Enchantments 220 Afterword 265 Notes 271 Index 313