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Loading... The Myth of the Eternal Return: Or, Cosmos and Historyby Mircéa Eliade
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Seminal work on the the history of religions and the intersection with philosophy and anthropology. One the most erudite thinkers that I have encountered. ( ) A challenge (especially for radicals) to rethink the very recent, very circumscribed notion that history is a necessarily progressive force. Eliade's examination of myth and ritual in traditional societies suggests that for modern humans, the truth is closer to Stephen Daedalus' idea: "history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awaken." no reviews | add a review
Belongs to Publisher SeriesBollingen Series (46)
This founding work of the history of religions, first published in English in 1954, secured the North American reputation of the Romanian émigré-scholar Mircea Eliade (1907-1986). Making reference to an astonishing number of cultures and drawing on scholarship published in no less than half a dozen European languages, Eliade's The Myth of the Eternal Return makes both intelligible and compelling the religious expressions and activities of a wide variety of archaic and "primitive" religious cultures. While acknowledging that a return to the "archaic" is no longer possible, Eliade passionately insists on the value of understanding this view in order to enrich our contemporary imagination of what it is to be human. Jonathan Z. Smith's new introduction provides the contextual background to the book and presents a critical outline of Eliade's argument in a way that encourages readers to engage in an informed conversation with this classic text. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)201.3Religions Religion Religious mythology, general classes of religion, interreligious relations and attitudes, social theology Mythology and mythological foundationsLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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