An Alaṅkāra Reader: Classical Indian Poetics with Yigal Bronner (Columbia UP, 2026)

An Alaṅkāra Reader (Columbia University Press, 2026) is a groundbreaking panoramic overview of this tradition, presenting extensive and accessible translations of key works that span its history, from the sixth to eighteenth century CE. These texts vividly show how Indian theorists analyzed simile, metaphor, allegory, and dozens of other figures that are distinctive to their world. Yigal Bronner’s commentary makes Sanskrit concepts of ornamentation approachable while placing them in historical context. He provides a new account of the history of Sanskrit poetics, showing how it underwent successive waves of theoretical revolutions and emerged as a prestigious field that attracted a variety of scholars in the early modern era.