Time, Space, and Sanskrit Stories

Catalog description

If a plot consists of a series of actions situated in time and space, it follows that storytellers arrange their narratives according to culturally specific metaphysics deeply embedded in literary tradition and the storytellers' own unconscious. This course will explore this proposition within the context of Ancient and Classical India. Covering literature composed over a span of three millennia (roughly 2000 BCE to 1200 CE), we will read descriptions of the universe, the workings of time, and the place of human beings within time and space. We will then pair these with selections from narrative literature that allow us to reflect on the relationship between narrative structure and the cosmologies in which an author worked. We will pay special attention to the frequently asserted claim that time in premodern India was cyclical (and not linear). How did Indian conceptions of time change over time? How were models of time and space reflected in storytelling traditions? How might such traditions have served to qualify and reshape these models? And where is the individual author, protagonist, and reader to be found against a backdrop of cosmic proportions? The course will include several films and a trip to the Met. All readings are in English and will include selections from scriptures sacred to Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains, such as the Rig Veda, Upanishads, Buddhist sutras, and the Bhagavad Gita, as well as Sanskrit epics, drama, kavya poetry, and story literature.