Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 9 Number 1, April 2008
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Cooksey, Thomas L., Masterpieces of Non-Western Literature, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2007, 213 pp., ISBN: 978-0-313-33858-8, $55 hardback.
Reviewed by
Masterpieces of Non-Western Literature is aimed, it says, at “the serious reader who wants something more substantial than can be found in the handbooks,” but who lacks the resources or time to read the scholarship on each of the works it examines. It offers, then, something in the nature of an expanded encyclopaedia entry for each work it analyzes. Each chapter follows more or less the same format, being divided into sections covering the general cultural and historical background to the work, including a history of the text (in some cases this is itself a fascinating story, as with The Epic of Gilgamesh), a summary of the plot, an examination of its themes, and a brief account of its subsequent influence. Each chapter concludes with a list of further reading.
Perhaps the best way to assess the book is by looking at a few individual chapters. The chapter on The Journey to the West is exemplary. This Chinese classic, better known in the west by the title of Arthur Waley’s translation Monkey, depicts with satirical verve the journey of five Buddhist pilgrims to collect scriptures from India. Cooksey discusses, briefly, the satirical element in this work, but is at his best when treating it as a Buddhist allegory. Given the necessary brevity of the discussion, he manages to do this in some detail. Cooksey thus notes not only that the whole work is an allegory of the journey to enlightenment, but that the five pilgrims and their interactions represent the five skandas or mental tendencies that together create the impression of a coherent self. He even analyzes the contest early on in the work between Monkey and Buddha in terms of mudras, the symbolic hand gestures used in Buddhist iconography. Furthermore, he briefly but tellingly notes the importance of water imagery in The Journey to the West, connecting it with the way Mahayana Buddhism uses images of streams and stream crossings. The whole chapter is concise, fluent and coherent.
Cooksey’s methodology works extremely well in this chapter. In some others it becomes a little problematic. Underlying his approach is the assumption that all these works are in some sense national epics, serving to create or reinforce a sense of cultural identity. As applied to the Mahabharata this assumption runs into problems. There is first of all the ambiguity of the Mahabharata’s status in India, in particular that part of it that makes up the Bhagavad Gita. The Mahabharata has the status of smriti (something remembered), rather than sruti (scripture), although the Gita plays a much more vital part in the religious lives of most Hindus than the Vedas. Thus, although a vital source for Hindu religious life, it is not a founding scripture (a concept itself that is not readily applicable to Hinduism – hence the difficulty in defining what Hinduism is.) Secondly, although it is one of the two great Hindu epics, it has never been used as a focal point for nationalistic feeling the way India’s other epic, the Ramayana, has. The hero of the latter work, Rama, has since India’s independence become the pre-eminent symbol for Hindu nationalists (a fact that has inflamed the ongoing dispute in Ayodhya over Rama’s birthplace). In conjunction with this there have been attempts precisely to turn the Ramayana into a unifying, founding scripture for all Hindus. Adding to Cooksey’s problems in this chapter is the sheer scale of the Mahabharata – amounting, as Cooksey puts it, to eight times the combined length of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Although the Mahabharata contains a coherent central narrative, Cooksey finds himself having to pursue a number of its digressions before getting to the main plot. He correctly notes the centrality of the concept of dharma, as well as the difficulty in adequately translating it, but he leaves very little room to discuss this vital topic. And although he also notes the moral ambiguities of the Mahabharata (which embodies a very realistic awareness of the damage war does to all sides), he ultimately gives it a rather moralistic reading. A more fruitful approach to this epic has been made by Julius Lipner, who analyzes one episode in the Mahabharata – the dicing match between Yudhishtira and Duryodhana – in terms of contesting interpretations of dharma. In his treatment, one episode becomes an epitome of the whole work, and by analyzing one part in depth, he throws light on the whole thing.
Cooksey runs into greatest difficulty with The Epic of Gilgamesh, largely because the pressure to be brief prevents him from giving adequate explanation. Thus one paragraph, explicating the character Enkidu as an exemplar of the mythic “wild man,” alludes in swift succession to Samson; “the figures of the Anglo-Saxon wudusasa”; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; the conflict of Esau and Jacob. (13-14) A little later he throws in a meagrely explained reference to the pre- and post-Axial worldviews, concluding with a comparison to The Odyssey and the statement that Achilles, like Gilgamesh, learns that “transcendence is not personal, but [is found] in the records of one’s deeds or those of one’s progeny.”(18) I kept wanting a fuller explanation or comparison. As a reader, I need a bit more help. The result is a chapter that is fascinating in its myriad suggested resonances, but frustrating because it touches on so many of them with little or no explication.
Having said this, the book is on the whole thoroughly researched and very readable. In some cases it has alerted me to works that I was not previously aware of, such as the Vietnamese Tale of Kieu and the west-African epic Sundiata. In the latter case, Cooksey very effectively summarizes its complex history as fundamentally a performed piece with elements of history, music and ritual. It is also not a single ‘work’ but exists in many different versions and was not committed to writing in any form until recently. Indeed, this is one of the pieces that raise problems for the whole conception of literature as a universal category. Cooksey skilfully relates Sundiata’s plot to the Malinese culture and worldview. The epic emerges, because of this, not as a contest of good and evil, but of a hero who knows how to act within the limits of the social and cosmic order, and a tyrant who does not.
The remainder of the chapters investigate Jayadeva’s Gitagovinda, the poetry of Li Po, Murasaki Shikibu’s Tale of Genji and Farid al-Din Attar’s Conference of the Birds (the latter also a very strong chapter).
The western academic world is all too often blind to traditions other than those originating in Western Europe. Cooksey’s book offers an accessible way into the great works of some of these non-European traditions. Although his method of exposition does not work equally well in all cases, it frequently throws up some very interesting information. The sections on “subsequent influence”, for example, reveal the way these pieces have lived on in both high and popular culture, sometimes in surprising ways. Thus the Mahabharata has, among other things, been adapted into a Japanese Manga cartoon featuring a girl called Juna and her wheelchair-bound friend Chris in a fairly obvious reference to Arjuna and Krishna.
A project like Cooksey’s is, in its nature, both ambitious and problematic. The book’s range is enormous, covering works from Asia, Africa and the Americas. Writing the whole book himself has inevitably meant that he must rely on translations, and he cannot possibly be an expert on all the cultures these works originate in. Inevitably, therefore, the book is a bit uneven. But given these limitations, Cooksey does a remarkable job. Most chapters provide a sound orientation within the cultural background to these works, while the best leave a vivid impression of their richness. Even the weaker chapters make you want to read the literature Cooksey analyzes. This, it seems to me, is a vital test for a book like this. As a way into the thought-worlds and literature of a wide range of cultures, I can recommend it.