Etienne
Rassendran
St.
Joseph’s College, Bangalore
Paper
Title: “
Abstract
So what then are the relations
between religion and literature? That would cause much acrimonious debate, even
today, despite the secularization of the cultural space. Many argue that religious
discourse shaped literary traditions in the world. Yet others claim that
literary traditions preceded and formed religious discourse. In fact they argue that the scriptures are
but literary stories said and spread in order to establish a scriptural canonicity.
Hence it seems futile to invest an apriori between the two categories; suffice
it to engage the relations between the two realms. As such in this paper I wish
only to demonstrate how religious discourse informs literary thought as
literary texts install scriptural authority.
I wish to explore this question under the two
headings of cultural hegemonies and discursive resistance. The nature of literature is conceptualised in
terms of the battle between pleasure and knowledge. If Plato banned poets from
his republic for eroticising the masses, Aristotle reads the literary as a kind
of knowledge. Between Augustine and
Aquinas in the Christian tradition, wherein this dialectics remains, there
results key epistemological questions for literature. But there is much
exclusion here that develops Eurocentricism which orientalises literary
representation of the non-European spaces. I wish to comment on these omissions as
hegemony and show how critical responses are but discursive resistances. For
this purpose, I will use Avorres’ commentaries, Luis De Cameons “ The Lusiads”
and Kabir’s poetry.
Dr Etienne Rassendren teaches English
Studies at St Joseph's College, Bangalore. He has a PhD in African Studies from
the Bangalore University. His interests include Cultural, Nationalism and
Gender Studies. He has recently completed a minor project with the UGC on
Gender and Nation.