संस्कृतसाहित्यामृतरसास्वाद:
Kalidasa's Abhijnanashakuntalam
- 20 lectures
- One a week
- No Sanskrit needed
- Paid before it begins
Among poetry the drama is best, and among dramas the Shakuntalam. Kalidasa took a simple episode from the Mahabharata and made a masterpiece of it; Sir William Jones, who translated it in 1789, called him the Shakespeare of India. Taught word by word, with the salient features of Sanskrit poetics as they arise.
What the course covers
- 01Kalidasa — his life, his date, his other works
- 02The Mahabharata episode he began from
- 03Acts I–II: the hermitage and the hunt
- 04Acts III–IV: the marriage and the parting
- 05Acts V–VII: the curse and the recognition
- 06Rasa and the theory of aesthetic experience
- 07Alankaras — the figures Kalidasa favours
- 08Sir William Jones and the play’s journey to Europe
Who it's for
Anyone who enjoys literature — this is the course that shows what Sanskrit can do as an art, not only as a scripture.
By the end
The whole play read closely, and enough poetics to see why a particular line is beautiful rather than only being told that it is.