Figuring Religions Comparing Ideas, Images, and Activities
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Shubha Pathak - Editor
Price: $95.00 Hardcover - 314 pages
Release Date: March 2013
ISBN10: N/A ISBN13: 978-1-4384-4537-3
Price: $33.95 Paperback - 314 pages
Release Date: January 2014
ISBN10: N/A ISBN13: 978-1-4384-4538-0
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Summary
Offers new ways of comparing features of the world’s religions.
Figuring Religions offers new ways of comparing prominent features of the world’s religions. Comparison has been at the heart of religious studies as a modern academic discipline, but comparison can be problematic. Scholars of religion have been faulted for ignoring or reinterpreting differences to create a universal paradigm. In reaction, many of today’s scholars have placed chief emphasis on the differences between traditions. Seeking to reinvigorate comparison and avoid its excesses, contributors to this volume use theories of metaphor and metonymy from the fields of philosophy, linguistics, and anthropology to look at religious ideas, images, and activities. Traditions considered include Hinduism, ancient Greek religions, Judaism, Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, Christianity, and Islam. By applying trope theories, contributors reveal elements of these religions in and across their cultural contexts.
Shubha Pathak is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religion at American University.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Foreword by Wendy Doniger
Introduction by Shubha Pathak
Part I. Figuring Religious Ideas
1. Marking Religion’s Boundaries: Constitutive Terms, Orienting Tropes, and Exegetical Fussiness Thomas A. Tweed
2. “Epic” as an Amnesiac Metaphor: Finding the Word to Compare Ancient Greek and Sanskrit Poems Shubha Pathak
3. Conceptions of the Self in the Zhuangzi: Conceptual Metaphor Analysis and Comparative
Thought Edward Slingerland
4. Theorizing Embodiment: Conceptual Metaphor Theory and the Comparative Study of Religion James Egge
Part II. Figuring Religious Images
5. Bathed in Milk: Metaphors of Suckling and Spiritual Transmission in Thirteenth-Century Kabbalah Ellen Haskell
6. Metaphors and Images of Dress and Nakedness: Wrappings of Embodied Identity Terhi Utriainen
Part III. Figuring Religious Activities
7. Poetry, Ritual, and Associational Thought in Early India and Elsewhere Laurie L. Patton
8. Spatial Metaphors and Women’s Religious Activities in Ancient Greece and China Yiqun Zhou
9. In Search of Equivalence: Conceiving Muslim-Hindu Encounter through Translation Theory Tony K. Stewart
