Routledge Handbook on Sufism

doi:10.4324/9781315175348

Abstract

This is a chronological history of the Sufi tradition, divided in to three sections, early, middle and modern periods. The book comprises 35 independent chapters with easily identifiable themes and/or geographical threads, all written by recognised experts in the field. The volume outlines the origins and early developments of Sufism by assessing the formative thinkers and practitioners and investigating specific pietistic themes. The middle period contains an examination of the emergence of the Sufi Orders and illustrates the diversity of the tradition. This middle period also analyses the fate of Sufism during the time of the Gunpowder Empires. Finally, the end period includes representative surveys of Sufism in several countries, both in the West and in traditional regions. This comprehensive and up-to-date collection of studies provides a guide to the Sufi tradition. The Handbook is a valuable resource for students and researchers with an interest in religion, Islamic Studies and Middle Eastern Studies.

Highlights

Veronica Ghirardi a gap in Hindi literature scholarship, and because it deliberately takes on a complex issue such as exploring elements of post-modernism in contemporary Hindi novels
This is in itself a formidable challenge, for Hindi being declared by the country’s Constitution adopted in 1950 India’s official language alongside English, it is by no means the one Indian language that has adopted without reluctance and difficulties of various kinds the literary genres imported from the Western, viz. British cultural sphere
The changed conditions of the country’s economy significantly contributed to the transformation of the cultural and literary sphere inducing Hindi as well as authors of other Indian vernaculars to produce narratives reflecting the characteristics of postmodernism in a more self-conscious manner

Summary

Introduction

Veronica Ghirardi a gap in Hindi literature scholarship, and because it deliberately takes on a complex issue such as exploring elements (or traces, as the title suggests) of post-modernism in contemporary Hindi novels. The book, the published version of Ghirardi’s recently awarded PhD thesis by the Università degli Studi di Torino, is the final outcome of a research that has taken the author several years exploring the influence of post-modernism as a category relying on Western thought patterns on Indian literature or, Hindi novels published in the decade between 1991 and 2001.

Results

Conclusion