Poetics of Religious Experience: The Islamic Context

by Aziz Esmail

This book investigates creativity of a particular kind, namely explorations in the language of symbols and metaphors, which constitute the core ideas and vision of a religious experience. In examining the symbolic and imaginative features of the poetics of religious experience, the author draws attention to a number of critical issues--literary, philosophical, and historical--which lie behind various interpretations of Islam and their relevance to the intellectual needs of the Muslim world today. Although these themes are addressed in the Islamic context, they are in fact of seminal importance to the more general problem of knowledge and interpretation and, in the wider field of comparative religion, human psychology and culture.

96 pages, Paperback

First published March 15, 1998

Reviews

[Zahwil Dossa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aziz Esmail is an Ismaili scholar and a childhood friend of my father. He starts out saying it's written for a general audience, but the book gets pretty deep. the main point of the book can be applied in defence of any religion - religion speaks a different language from analytical philosophy, and its propositions do not have the property of truth or falsehood. The langauge of religion is symbolic - hence "poetry". the codification of revelation (an oral tradition) has altered its meaning.