Semiotics of religion : signs of the sacred in history / Robert A. Yelle.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Yelle, Robert A.

Series:

Bloomsbury advances in semiotics.

Bloomsbury advances in semiotics

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Semiotics--History.

Semiotics.

Religion--History.

Religion.

Semiotics--Religious aspects.

Structuralism (Literary analysis).

Representation (Philosophy).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (257 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.

Summary:

Following the heyday of Lévi-Straussian structuralism in the 1970s-80s, little attention has been paid by scholars of religion to semiotics. <i>Semiotics of Religion</i> reassesses key semiotic theories in the light of religious data. Yelle examines the semiotics of religion from structural and historical perspectives, drawing on Peircean linguistic anthropology, Jakobsonian poetics, comparative religion and several theological traditions. This book pays particular attention to the transformation of religious symbolism under modernization and the rise of a culture of the printed book. Among th

Contents:

Cover; HalfTitle; Series; Title; Copyright; Dedication; Contents; Acknowledgments; 1 Semiotics beyond structuralism ; Why a semiotics of religion?; A brief critical survey of some semiotic theories of religion; Semiotic recognition; Bringing history to the semiotics of religion; Outline of chapters; 2 The poetics of ritual performance ; Toward a theory of poetic performance; The rhetoric of spells; The principles of spell-construction; The function of spells

The production of certainty: analogical punishments and trials by ordealChiasmus and communication; Repetition, chiasmus, and salvation; The reality of magic; The question of deception: Pavlov's dogs and dirty dancing; Excursus: encounter with a fakir; 3 Natural, arbitrary, and divine languages ; The naturalization of arbitrariness; "The tyranny of taxonomies"; "I pooh-pooh the purity": etymologies in Hindu and British traditions; "Natural language[s] of the hand": gesture and the question of arbitrariness

John Bulwer's Chirologia and ChironomiaHindu dance: gesture in the Natyasastra; Mudras in Hindu Tantra; 4 Literalism, iconoclasm, and the question of the secular ; Literalism: what is old and what new?; Iconoclasm and literalism; Statutes versus statues: Bentham's attack on the idols of language; Semiotics and the question of the secular

5 Transformations in poetic performance: The coordination of Protestant literalism and print culture The repudiation of ritual: attacks on ritual repetition and poetic performance; The literacy hypothesis; "To have and to hold"; The literacy hypothesis revisited; 6 Arbitrariness, anomaly, and agency: A critique of Mary Douglas's structuralist idea of the Holy

Deist semiotics and the attack on revelationThe dietary laws revisited; Conclusion ; Religion and communication; Arbitrariness and certainty; From pragmatics to semantics, and back again; Reason, autonomy, and the critique of the sign; Last words; Notes ; Bibliography ; Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781441172372

1441172378

9781283853675

1283853671

9781441167651

144116765X

OCLC:

819816886