Shamanism and the eighteenth century / Gloria Flaherty.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Flaherty, Gloria, 1938-1992, author.

Series:

Princeton legacy library

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Shamanism.

Europe--Intellectual life--18th century.

Europe.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (337 pages) : illustrations.

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [1992]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Pursuing special experiences that take them to the brink of permanent madness or death, men and women in every age have "returned" to heal and comfort their fellow human beings--and these shamans have fascinated students of society from Herodotus to Mircea Eliade. Gloria Flaherty's book is about the first Western encounters with shamanic peoples and practices. Flaherty makes us see the eighteenth century as an age in which explorers were fascinating all Europe with tales of shamans who accomplished a "self-induced cure for a self-induced fit." Reports from what must have seemed a forbidden world of strange rites and moral licentiousness came from botanists, geographers, missionaries, and other travelers of the period, and these accounts created such a stir that they permeated caf talk, journal articles, and learned debates, giving rise to plays, encyclopedia articles, art, and operas about shamanism. The first part of the book describes in rich detail how information about shamanism entered the intellectual mainstream of the eighteenth century. In the second part Flaherty analyzes the artistic and critical implications of that process. In so doing, she offers remarkable chapters on Diderot, Herder, Goethe, and the cult of the genius of Mozart, as well as a chapter devoted to a new reading of Goethe's Faust that views Faust as the modern shaman.Originally published in 1992.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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface

Introduction

PART ONE. FROM FABLES TO FACTS: THE EUROPEAN RECEPTION OF SHAMANISM

Chapter One. The Paradigm of Permissibility, or, Early Reporting Strategies

Chapter Two. Eighteenth-Century Observations from the Field

Chapter Three. Interaction, Transformation, and Extinction

Chapter Four. Shamanism among the Medical Researchers

PART TWO. BACK TO FICTIONS AND FANTASIES: THE IMPLICATIONS OF SHAMANISM FOR THE ARTS IN EUROPE

Chapter Five. The Impact of Russia on Diderot and Le neveu de Ranteau

Chapter Six. Herder on the Artist as the Shaman of Western Civilization

Chapter Seven. Mozart, or, Orpheus Reborn

Chapter Eight. Shamans Failed and Successful in Goethe

Chapter Nine. Faust, the Modern Shaman

Afterword Toward a Shamanology

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (pages [259]-291) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-691-63203-0

0-691-60256-5

1-4008-6264-7

OCLC:

889252730