Encountering Buddhism in Twentieth-Century British and American Literature

Download or read book Encountering Buddhism in Twentieth-Century British and American Literature written by Lawrence Normand and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-10-24 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Encountering Buddhism in Twentieth-Century British and American Literature explores the ways in which 20th-century literature has been influenced by Buddhism, and has been, in turn, a major factor in bringing about Buddhism's increasing spread and influence in the West. Focussing on Britain and the United States, Buddhism's influence on a range of key literary texts will be examined in the context of those societies' evolving modernity. Writers discussed include T. S. Eliot, Hermann Hesse, Virginia Woolf, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, J. D. Salinger, Iris Murdoch, Maxine Hong Kingston. This book brings together for the first time a series of context-rich interpretations that demonstrate the importance of literature in this ongoing cultural change in Britain and the United States.