The Gītagovinda by Jayadeva is perhaps the most influential Sanskrit text, flamboyantly alive today in all aspects of Indian art, from painting to music and dance performance. Yet, after a sudden spate of high-quality scholarship in the late 1970s, little has been published on this seminal work. Jesse Knutson's contribution is thus very welcome. In this monograph, he presents a close reading of Jayadeva's work against the Sanskrit poetry of his contemporaries at the Sena court (the “salon” of the title) in Bengal at the “twilight” of the twelfth century, together with a comparison with the Bengali poet Baḍu Caṇḍīdās’ Śrīkṛṣṇakīrttana at the cusp of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (the “beyond”). This double-pronged approach circumvents the more common devotional approach to Jayadeva, at once returning him to the Sanskrit courtly milieu that was his first audience and projecting him into a reception moment in the vernacular two centuries later,...
Skip Nav Destination
Article navigation
