Allegorical representations of the body in the Vijñānagīta by Keśavdās

This chapter addresses the issue of the body and its representations in the tradition of Indian allegorical dramas initiated by the Prabodhacandrodaya of Krsnamisra. Moving from textual analysis, it explores the connections between allegory and the body. Embodiment is in fact the main constituent of allegory, being the rhetoric device to represent abstract entities as real characters. As many studies have demonstrated in the last decades, the body has become a privileged analytical category in the field of social sciences and humanities, particularly after the turn of cultural and gender studies. Allegory has been long debated in Western literary criticism, and somehow overlapped with personification in its rhetorical applications. The embodiment of abstract entities into human characters implies a very detailed iconographical apparatus, in order that they might be immediately recognizable. One of the standards of comparison is the feminine body indeed, whose beauty is enhanced through the technique of “toe-to-head description”.