Synopses & Reviews
The intense poignancy of aesthetic experience has impelled theorists to view it as theologically significant. By designating basic human emotions as
rasa, a word that connotes juice, taste, flavor, or the essence of a thing, Indian aesthetic theory conceptualizes emotional states as something to be savored. At their core, emotions can be tastes of the divine. In this book, the methods of the emerging discipline of comparative theology enable the author's appreciation of Hindu texts and embodied experiences to illuminate her Christian reflections on aesthetics and emotion.
Three emotions vie for prominence in the religious sphere: peace, love, and fury. Indian literary theorist Abhinavagupta claimed that all aesthetic experience is analogous with union with brahman, and that the aesthetic emotion of peace best approximates this goal of religious experience. Twentieth-century Catholic artistic and liturgical experiments in India explored this religious modality. By contrast, devotees of Krsna have argued that love communicates most powerfully with divinity, an insight that runs parallel with Bernard of Clairvaux's readings of the Song of Songs. Both primary religious emotions, peace and love, arise through embodied practices; yet both also tend to abstract from the material world and marginalize the bodies of the non-elite. The book turns to the other basic human emotions described in rasa theory in order to attend to the material means of evoking and exhibiting emotion. Dalit folk expressions of fury at caste oppression offer a powerful example of participation in the righteous anger of a just God. The implications of this constructive theology of emotion for Christian liturgy, pastoral care, and social engagement are manifold.
Review
"This work is an important contribution to the current landscape of comparative theology--where deep learning is taking place across religious lines--as it moves the discourse forward by incorporating both critical analysis and embodied practices."-Jeannine Hill Fletcher, Fordham University
Synopsis
The intensity and meaningfulness of aesthetic experience have often been described in theological terms. By designating basic human emotions as rasa, a word that connotes taste, flavor, or essence, Indian aesthetic theory conceptualizes emotional states as something to be savored. At their core, emotions can be tastes of the divine. In this book, the methods of the emerging discipline of comparative theology enable the author's appreciation of Hindu texts and practices to illuminate her Christian reflections on aesthetics and emotion.
Three emotions vie for prominence in the religious sphere: peace, love, and fury. Whereas Indian theorists following Abhinavagupta claim that the aesthetic emotion of peace best approximates the goal of religious experience, devotees of Krishna and medieval Christian readings of the Song of Songs argue that love communicates most powerfully with divinity. In response to the transcendence emphasized in both approaches, the book turns to fury at injustice to attend to emotion's foundations in the material realm. The implications of this constructive theology of emotion for Christian liturgy, pastoral care, and social engagement are manifold.
About the Author
Michelle Voss Roberts is Assistant Professor of Theology and Culture at Wake Forest
University School of Divinity. She is the award-winning author of Dualities: A Theology of Difference.
Table of Contents
List of Abbreviations
Sanskrit Pronunciation Guide
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Rasa
Part I: Peace
1. The Bliss of Peace
2. Suffering and Peace
Part II: Love
3. The Rasa of Love Incarnate
4. A Dilemma of Feelings
5. Love, Bodies, and Others
Part III: Fury
6. Dalit Arts and the Failure of Aesthetics
7. Fury as a Religious Sentiment
Part IV: Tastes of the Divine
8. Toward a Holistic Theology of the Emotions
9. Wonder
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Index