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Rudy book, Romanticism and Zen Buddhism, published
April 2, 2004 | |||||
KOKOMO. Ind.—The Edwin Mellen Press has released Romanticism and Zen Buddhism, the third book in a series by Indiana University Kokomo Professor of English John Rudy, Ph.D. The hardbound volume, which can be signed by Rudy, is available in the IU Kokomo Bookstore for $49.95. Mellen also published Rudy’s second book, Emerson and Zen Buddhism (2001). His first book, Wordsworth and the Zen Mind, was published by the state University of New York Press in 1996. These books are also available in the IU Kokomo Bookstore.
In Romanticism and Zen Buddhism, Rudy examines the works of such 19th century romantic poets as Shelley, Blake, Coleridge, Keats and Wordsworth. According to peer reviewer Ruth Ragovin, who edits a scholarly series for Mellen, Rudy “draws convincing parallels” between those writers’ perspectives and the “self-emptying” meditative practice of Zen Buddhists. “The reader is made aware of the many similar ways that each [featured poet] views self and the universe,” she wrote. Reviewer Hall Peebles, a professor emeritus of religion at Wabash College, said the book demonstrates Rudy to be “thoroughly at home with the romantic poets . . ., well informed about Zen literature,” and “in harmony with the spirit of Zen.” Rudy’s work on Romanticism and Zen Buddhism was underwritten in part by an Indiana University President’s Arts and Humanities Initiative grant and an IU Kokomo Summer Faculty Fellowship, both granted in 2002. The author is “building pages” for two more books, with the tentative titles Meditations in Zen: A Guide to Reflective Spirituality and Zen and Literary Ethics: A Discourse in Reflective Spirituality. Both manuscripts were partially inspired by students in IU Kokomo’s first Master of Liberal Studies (MLS) course—Zen in Literature, Art, and Philosophy taught by Rudy last fall. True to the MLS program’s aims, Rudy said he wanted to offer “a truly original” cross-disciplinary course, while helping the master’s students achieve expertise and confidence “in a subject area foreign both to their undergraduate experiences and life experiences.” After initial struggles, the students met the challenge of digesting complex readings and philosophical concepts “with a level of grace and skill that I found quite simply astounding,” Rudy said. “By midpoint in the semester, the students had taken over the class almost completely,” he said, initiating their own discussions and “using me more as a resource person than as a guiding authority figure. “The class discussions gave me some impetus to proceed with the more general literary overview of Zen and Literary Ethics and to pursue the idea of writing the [Meditations in Zen] guide,” Rudy said. He also credited Robert D. Richardson Jr., Ph.D., for the initial suggestion leading to Meditations. An author of leading critical biographies on Thoreau and Emerson, Richardson wrote the preface to Rudy’s Emerson and Zen Buddhism. Zen and Literary Ethics, Rudy said, may be his “most theoretical” book of all. In it, he hopes to “recoup for criticism a viable, non-sectarian, non-mystical spiritualist reading of literature from the reductive effects of modernist and post-modernist aesthetics on the one hand and from the sectarian tendencies to simplistic codifications on the other.”
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