Encountering Buddhism in Twentieth-Century British and American Literature

Encountering Buddhism in Twentieth-Century British and American Literature explores the ways in which 20th-century literature has been influenced by Buddhism and has been in turn a major factor in bringing about Buddhism's increasing spread and influence in the West. Focussing on Britain and the United States Buddhism's influence on a range of key literary texts will be examined in the context of those societies' evolving modernity. Writers discussed include T. S. Eliot Hermann Hesse Virginia Woolf Jack Kerouac Allen Ginsberg J. D. Salinger Iris Murdoch Maxine Hong Kingston. This book brings together for the first time a series of context-rich interpretations that demonstrate the importance of literature in this ongoing cultural change in Britain and the United States.