Research@RSIS Newsletter Feedback Form
Irreligious Literatures: Poetry between Buddhism and Islam
Dr Rafal Stepien Assistant Professor and Coordinator of MSc (Asian Studies) Programme
Dr Rafal Stepien
1
This project explores how major Buddhist and Islamic philosopher-poets express profound ambivalence toward their own religious heritage in literary form. Firmly based in original sources composed in Classical Chinese and Persian, this work proposes hitherto unsuspected parallels between two drastically diverse and mutually antagonistic religious traditions. By examining Buddhist and Islamic poets standing astride the orthodoxy/heterodoxy threshold, Irreligious Literatures generates fresh insights into the variegated nature of religiosity itself. In the process, it cuts across traditional boundaries separating the comparative study of world religions, global literatures, and cross-cultural philosophies, all from a distinctly non-Western perspective. Finally, its conclusions shed light onto the transmission of literary models along the Silk Route from China through to Persia, and thence yielding original insights as to the historical formation of vernacular literature in Europe.
| Theme: | General / Country and Region Studies / Religion in Contemporary Society |
| Region: | East Asia and Asia Pacific / Europe / South Asia / Global |
| Entity: | SRP |
