“And We Shall Compose a Poem to Establish These Truths”: The Power of Narrative Art in South Asian Literary Cultures

Abstract

This essay examines the potential connection between poetic narrative form and the cultivation of dharma, between ethics and aesthetics, in the literary theories and texts of premodern South Asia. Having considered possible ways that the reading of poetry or the watching of a staged drama might contribute toward realization of the four classical aims of moral life (and beyond) theoretically, a close reading of a dramatic comedy from South Asia will serve as a working illustration. In conclusion, the potential relevance of such an exercise for contemporary Euro–American discussions of narrative ethics will be briefly considered.