| Abstract |
"At the end of the nineteenth century, confronted by colonialism, scientific rationality, and new versions of national identity, Buddhism reinvented itself for the modern era as a rational philosophy that became one of the most successful worldviews both in Asia and the West. Soon thereafter novelists began to incorporate their own ideas about modern Buddhism into their work, refashioning it anew not as a means for overcoming the fractures of modernity but as a realistic philosophy attuned to the tumult of a violent, global era. Avram Alpert shows how novelists from India, Japan, South Africa, the UK, Cuba, and the US realized that modern life did not allow for the Buddhist promise of enlightenment through the overcoming of personal identity, confronted as they were by the reincarnation of failed historical processes--racism, colonialism, patriarchy. Interwoven with his own narrative of Buddhist enchantment and disappointment, he argues that these authors evolved new visions of partial enlightenment, liberation from political suffering, and models of authenticity in an inauthentic world that remain meaningful for understanding our place in the chaos of global modernity"-- Provided by publisher. |
