Humanities Arts Cultural Stu 0176 - Religion and Literature

Meditation, vision, conversion, mysticism, devotion, ecstasy, prayer: these are just some of the forms through which people of faith around the world have conceived of religious or spiritual meaning. The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the study of world religions through a consideration of several modalities of religious experience as represented in texts variously drawn from Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Native American sources. Adopting for our methodological framework a typology of religious psychology suggested by William James, we examine each of these writings in their respective religious, historical, and literary contexts. Our basic concern will be to understand the problems of representing private, interior, or ineffable experiences in written forms. What can we understand of religious experience from its literary representations? What, for example, is the relationship between religious conversion and an allegory of faith? Is poetry better equipped than narrative for the expression or recreation of meditative experience? In addition to James's The Varieties of Religious Experience, our reading will include Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, Jayadeva's Gitagovinda, Black Elk Speaks, Elie Wiesel's Souls on Fire, the Buddhacarita, the Autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila, The Way of a Pilgrim, and Basho's The Narrow Road to the Deep North.

Culture, Humanities, and Languages Writing and Research Multiple Cultural Perspectives Independent Work Students are expected to spend 7 hours weekly in preparation and work outside of class time.