The Department of Asian Studies
Subject: An Island in a Cosmopolitan Sea: Toward a Definition of Kakawin Poetics.
Supervisor: Prof. Yigal Bronner and Prof. Ronit Ricci.
Abstract: Danielle’s research explores the poetic system of the kakawin genre – a literary style written in Kawi (Old Javanese) that flourished in the courts of Java and Bali between the 9th – 19th centuries. Focusing on its Javanese period (9th–15th CE), Danielle aims to provide the a comprehensive analysis of kakawin aesthetics by articulating the various forms of literary conventions, figures of speech, and text-building strategies associated with the genre. Situating kakawin within the globalized Sanskritic community known in scholarship as the Sanskrit cosmopolis, she explores the literary dialogues these cultures shared by examining how Sanskrit models were borrowed into the Javanese style, reconfigured, adapted, and intermixed with pre-existing local concepts to form kakawin poetics.