Poetics of Religious Experience: The Islamic Context (Institute of Ismaili Studies Occasional Papers (Numbered))

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.