Author: Alexandra K. Grieser
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110460459
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 452
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Book Description
This volume is the first English language presentation of the innovative approaches developed in the aesthetics of religion. The chapters present diverse material and detailed analysis on descriptive, methodological and theoretical concepts that together explore the potential of an aesthetic approach for investigating religion as a sensory and mediated practice. In dialogue with, yet different from, other major movements in the field (material culture, anthropology of the senses, for instance), it is the specific intent of this approach to create a framework for understanding the interplay between sensory, cognitive and socio-cultural aspects of world-construction. The volume demonstrates that aesthetics, as a theory of sensory knowledge, offers an elaborate repertoire of concepts that can help to understand religious traditions. These approaches take into account contemporary developments in scientific theories of perception, neuro-aesthetics and cultural studies, highlighting the socio-cultural and political context informing how humans perceive themselves and the world around them. Developing since the 1990s, the aesthetic approach has responded to debates in the study of religion, in particular striving to overcome biased categories that confined religion either to texts and abstract beliefs, or to an indisputable sui generis mode of experience. This volume documents what has been achieved to date, its significance for the study of religion and for interdisciplinary scholarship.
Author: Dirk Johannsen
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900442167X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 391
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Book Description
Narrative Cultures and the Aesthetics of Religion presents the aesthetics of narrativity in religious contexts by approaching narrative acts as situated modes of engaging with reality, equally shaped by the immersive character of the stories told and the sensory qualities of their performances. Introducing narrative cultures as an integrative framework of analysis, the volume builds a bridge between classical content-based approaches to narrative sources and the aesthetic study of religions as constituted by sensory and mediated practices. Studying stories in conjunction with the role that performative acts of storytelling play in the cultivation of the senses, the contributors explore the efficacy of storytelling formats in narrative cultures from ancient times until today, in regions and cultures across the globe. Contributors are: Stefan Binder, Arianna Borrelli, Markus Altena Davidsen, Laura Feldt, Ingvild Sælid Gilhus, Dirk Johannsen, Jens Kreinath, Isabel Laack, Martin Lehnert, Brigitte Luchesi, Bastiaan van Rijn, Caroline Widmer, Annette Wilke, Katharina Wilkens.
Author: S. Brent Plate
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231545797
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 245
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Book Description
Religion and cinema share a capacity for world making, ritualizing, mythologizing, and creating sacred time and space. Through cinematography, mise-en-scène, editing, and other production activities, film takes the world “out there” and refashions it. Religion achieves similar ends by setting apart particular objects and periods of time, telling stories, and gathering people together for communal actions and concentrated focus. The result of both cinema and religious practice is a re-created world: a world of fantasy, a world of ideology, a world we long to live in, or a world we wish to avoid at all costs. Religion and Film introduces readers to both religious studies and film studies by focusing on the formal similarities between cinema and religious practices and on the ways they each re-create the world. Explorations of film show how the cinematic experience relies on similar aesthetic devices on which religious rituals have long relied: sight, sound, the taste of food, the body, and communal experience. Meanwhile, a deeper understanding of the aesthetic nature of religious rituals can alter our understanding of film production. Utilizing terminology and theoretical insights from the study of religion as well as the study of film, Religion and Film shows that by paying attention to the ways films are constructed, we can shed new light on the ways religious myths and rituals are constructed and vice versa. This thoroughly revised and expanded new edition is designed to appeal to the needs of courses in religion as well as film departments. In addition to two new chapters, this edition has been restructured into three distinct sections that offer students and instructors theories and methods for thinking about cinema in ways that more fully connect film studies with religious studies.
Author: Frank Burch Brown
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691024723
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 247
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Book Description
In this groundbreaking work, Brown shows how aesthetics, no less than ethics, can play a central role in the study of religion and in the practice of theology. "An important book, wide ranging, often very witty . . . showing an impressive grasp of the current state of aesthetics and possible new directions".--Nick McAdoo, British Journal of Aesthetics.
Author: James Alfred Martin, Jr.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400860598
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 232
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Book Description
In this broad historical and critical overview based on a lifetime of scholarship, James Alfred Martin, Jr., examines the development of the concepts of beauty and holiness as employed in theories of aesthetics and of religion. The injunction in the Book of Psalms to "worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness" addressed a tradition that has comprehended holiness primarily in terms of ethical righteousness--a conception that has strongly influenced Western understandings of religion. As the author points out, however, the Greek forbears of Western thought, as well as many Eastern traditions, were and are more broadly concerned with the pursuit of beauty, truth, and goodness as ideals of human excellence, that is, with the "holiness of beauty." In this work Martin describes a philosophical stance that should prove to be most productive for the dialogue between aesthetics and religion. Beginning with the treatment of beauty and holiness in Hebrew, Greek, and classical Christian thought, the author traces the emergence of modern theories of aesthetics and religion in the Enlightenment. He then outlines the role of aesthetics in the theories of religion proposed by Otto, Eliade, van der Leeuw, and Tillich, in the cultural anthropology of Geertz, and in the thought of Santayana, Dewey, Whitehead, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein. In a global context Martin explores the relation of aesthetic theory to religious thought in the traditions of India, China, and Japan and concludes with reflections on the viability of modern aesthetic and religious theory in the light of contemporary cultural and methodological pluralism. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Author: A. Pinn
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230622941
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 219
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Book Description
A great deal of attention has been given to the sociopolitical and theological importance of Black Religion. However, of less academic concern up to this point is the aesthetic qualities that define much of what is said and done within the context of Black Religion. Recognizing the centrality of the black body for black religious thought and life, this book proposes a conversation concerning various dimensions of the aesthetic considerations and qualities of Black Religion as found in various parts of the world, including the the Americas, the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe. In this respect, Black Religion is simply meant to connote the religious orientations and arrangements of people of African descent across the globe.
Author: Daniel Gold
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520236149
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 315
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Book Description
This is a book that looks at contemporary challenges to studying and writing in religion, rethinking the discipline in a way that takes seriously both the aesthetic dimensions and its need for scientific discipline.
Author: Kutter Callaway
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506439896
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 292
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Book Description
To really understand God, you have to understand atheism. Atheism and Christianity are often placed at polar opposite ends of a spectrum, forever in stark conflict with each other. In The Aesthetics of Atheism, Kutter Callaway and Barry Taylor propose a radical alternative: atheism and theism need each other. In fact, atheism offers profound and necessary theological insights into the heart of Christianity itself. To get at these truths, Callaway and Taylor dive into the aesthetic dimensions of atheism, using everything from Stranger Things to Damien Hirst's controversial sculptures to the music of David Bowie, Nick Cave, and Leonard Cohen. This journey through contemporary culture and its imagination offers readers a deeper understanding of theology, culture, and how to engage faith in a chaotic and complex world where God is present in the most unexpected place: atheism.
Author: Hilary Fraser
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521307678
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
This study is an important contribution to the intellectual history of Victorian England which examines the religio-aesthetic theories of some central writers of the time. Dr Fraser begins with a discussion of the aesthetic dimensions of Tractarian theology and then proceeds to the orthodox certainties of Hopkins' theory of inscape, Ruskin's and Arnold's moralistic criticism of literature and the visual arts, and Pater's and Wilde's faith in a religion of art. The author identifies significant cultural and historical conditions which determined the interdependence of aesthetic and religious sensibility in the period. She argues that certain tensions in the thought of Wordsworth and Coleridge - tensions between poetry and religion, rebellion and reaction, individualism and authority - continued to manifest themselves throughout the Victorian age, and as society became increasingly democratic, religion in turn became increasingly personal and secular.
Author: Alexandra K. Grieser
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110461013
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 512
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Book Description
This volume is the first English language presentation of the innovative approaches developed in the aesthetics of religion. The chapters present diverse material and detailed analysis on descriptive, methodological and theoretical concepts that together explore the potential of an aesthetic approach for investigating religion as a sensory and mediated practice. In dialogue with, yet different from, other major movements in the field (material culture, anthropology of the senses, for instance), it is the specific intent of this approach to create a framework for understanding the interplay between sensory, cognitive and socio-cultural aspects of world-construction. The volume demonstrates that aesthetics, as a theory of sensory knowledge, offers an elaborate repertoire of concepts that can help to understand religious traditions. These approaches take into account contemporary developments in scientific theories of perception, neuro-aesthetics and cultural studies, highlighting the socio-cultural and political context informing how humans perceive themselves and the world around them. Developing since the 1990s, the aesthetic approach has responded to debates in the study of religion, in particular striving to overcome biased categories that confined religion either to texts and abstract beliefs, or to an indisputable sui generis mode of experience. This volume documents what has been achieved to date, its significance for the study of religion and for interdisciplinary scholarship.
