Devotional Poetics and the Indian Sublime by Vijay Mishra (review)

314 letters in canada 1999 Literature and Culture' and `Polysystem Theory.' Anchoring these theoretical and methodological discussions, the book contains sections on literature and cultural participation in Canada and in Hungary, bringing these together subsequently in an extended discussion of the character Almásy in Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient (which draws on the author's previously published work). Arguing that ```autobiographical detail''' is an important aspect of the contextualization of comparatist practice, the author provides us with such details as results of his SSHRC grant applications, his conviction that`housework must be shared,' and suggestions about what one should do when ```out with the boys.''' The latter two points are made in the chapter on `Women's Literature and Men Writing about Women,' which argues that `gender responsibility' must inform critical practices, `especially when your spouse has a career on her own.' There is no sense here, however, that heteronormativity might also inform critical practices, as well as literary ones, and that explorations of these norms have been producing some of the most important new comparatist work of the last decade. The book's last chapter, on `The Study of Literature and the Electronic Age,' is the most promising in conception, though it tends to focus on `the present state of the information highway' rather than on methodological issues specifically allied to comparatism, and to infer that the import of electronic media for comparatist practice may lie in `basic data gathering.' In fact, Internet access and hypertextuality are transforming comparatist practice in a way that confirms the author's concluding assertion that `the study of literature is applicable to the ``real'' world,' and in precisely the ways in which those quotation marks suggest. (RICHARD CAVELL) Vijay Mishra. Devotional Poetics and the Indian Sublime State University of New York Press 1998. xiv, 268. US $21.95 Vijay Mishra begins his work by drawing attention to the recent work done by G.N. Devy, who, in his polemical book on the notion of cultural amnesia in literary and cultural understanding, makes a strong case for jettisoning Western modes of analysis that, in the process of providing a theoretical matrix for the study of Indian texts, also perpetuate an imperialism that denies indigenous literature its validity and importance. Mishra does not endorse or repudiate Devy at this stage, but signals that his study of the sublime is also a response to Devy's preoccupation with methodology and discourse. When he approaches the final sections of his study, he undertakes a much broader critique of the nativist claim, for it is by then clear that if Mishra is willing to concede that Devy's stance is a necessary reminder about the dangers of mainstream appropriation, he is also not blind to the limitations of an uncritical return to nativism. Mishra's humanities 315 main concern is not the current debate about nativism, but it is one of many issues that inevitably frame this scholarly and very erudite work about devotional poetry and the Indian sublime. As a contribution to Indian studies, Mishra's work is an impressive achievement, no less significant than the work of authors such as Ronald Inden, George Hart, and Thomas Trautmann. Mishra's thesis turns on the perception that the expression of an Indian sublime would be inherently futile if one were to assert that God is beyond representation. Within the framework of canonical Sanskrit texts, divinity transcends apprehension. Vedic and Puranic texts, working with the notion of a divinity that encapsulates the universe while remaining formless, reinforce the hegemony of a particular caste and perpetuate a world view that alienates and distances the marginalized. In short, Hinduism, in its non-dualistic Sanskrit form is casteistic, patriarchal, and conservative. The very terms within which mainstream Hinduism defines itself prevent mass participation. The purist strain in Vedic doctrine probably explains why, for instance, there was such an empathy between the Orientalists and the Sanskritists in the eighteenth century. It is thus hardly surprising that various forms of resistance, from time to time, undermined the strength and appeal of Hinduism in India. The revival of Hinduism and its pervasive influence, then, are the result of the bhakti movement, which began...