Encountering Buddhism in twentieth-century British and American literature

Author(s)

• Normand, Lawrence
• Winch, Alison

Bibliographic Information

Encountering Buddhism in twentieth-century British and American literature

edited by Lawrence Normand and Alison Winch

（Literary studies）

Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015

• : pbk

Other Title

Encountering Buddhism in 20th-century British and American literature

Note

Bibliography: p. [215]-230

Includes index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Encountering Buddhism in Twentieth-Century British and American Literature explores the ways in which 20th-century literature has been influenced by Buddhism, and has been, in turn, a major factor in bringing about Buddhism's increasing spread and influence in the West. Focussing on Britain and the United States, Buddhism's influence on a range of key literary texts are examined in the context of those societies' evolving modernity. Writers discussed include T. S. Eliot, Hermann Hesse, Virginia Woolf, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, J. D. Salinger, Iris Murdoch, Maxine Hong Kingston. This book brings together for the first time a series of context-rich interpretations that demonstrate the importance of literature in this ongoing cultural change in Britain and the United States.

Table of Contents

Contributor Details Introduction 1. Reincarnation and Selfhood in Olive Schreiner's The Buddhist Priest's Wife and Undine Erin Louttit 2. Shangri-La and Buddhism in James Hilton's Lost Horizon and W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood's The Ascent of F6 Lawrence Normand 3. [A] 'ears of my ears': e. e. cummings' Buddhist prosody Erin Lafford and Emma Mason 4. Zen Buddhism as Radical Conviviality in the Works of Henry Miller, Kenneth Rexroth, and Thomas Merton Manuel Yang 5. Radical Occidentalism: The Zen Anarchism of Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen James Patrick Brown 6. Buddhism, Madness and Movement: Triangulating Jack Kerouac's Belief System Bent Sorensen 7. Biology, the Buddha and the Beasts: The Influence of Ernst Haeckel and Arthur Schopenhauer on Samuel Beckett's How It Is Andy Wimbush 8. 'That Other Ocean': Buddhism, Vedanta, and The Perennial Philosophy in Christopher Isherwood's A Single Man Bidhan Roy 9. Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior as Mahayana Meditation Sarah Gardam 10. The Aesthetics of Compassion in Iris Murdoch's The Sea, the Sea Elena Spandri 11. Strange Entanglements: Buddhism and Quantum Theory in Contemporary Nonfiction Sean Miller Bibliography

by "Nielsen BookData"

• NCID: BB19925290
• ISBN:
  • 9781474232852
• Country Code: uk
• Title Language Code: eng
• Text Language Code: eng
• Place of Publication: London
• Pages/Volumes: ix, 238 p.
• Size: 24 cm
• Classification:
  • DC23 : 820.9382943
• Subject Headings:
  • LCSH : English literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism
  • LCSH : American literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism
  • LCSH : Buddhism in literature
• Parent Bibliography ID:
  • BB11581799