Overview

Human cultures, especially religious groups but also secular artists and performers, often ritualize bodies as sacred books and books as divine beings. An international team of scholars addresses this theme of books as sacred beings in this volume through an impressively diverse range of primary material and perspectives. These studies show the wide variety of ways in which books, bodies, and beings intermingle in material sacred texts manipulated by human bodies, and also in literary and artistic depictions of transcendent textual bodies. The boundary between material immanence and spiritual transcendence turns out to be very thin indeed when people use books. The chapters on specific book practices in different cultures are bracketed by an introduction to the collection and by a concluding essay that extrapolates on the widespread theme of books as sacred beings.

Full Product Details

Author:   James W Watts ,  Yohan Yoo
Publisher:   Equinox Publishing Ltd
Imprint:   Equinox Publishing Ltd
Weight:   0.535kg
ISBN:  

9781781798843

ISBN 10:   1781798842
Pages:   168
Publication Date:   18 October 2021
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Temporarily unavailable  
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Table of Contents

1. Introduction James W. Watts 2. Performing Scriptures: Ritualizing Written Texts in Seolwi-seolgyeong, the Korean Shamanistic Recitation of Scriptures Yohan Yoo 3. Embodying the Qu'ran Katharina Wilkens, LMU Munich 4. Sacred Texts and the Digital Turn: Reflections on Scriptures as Material Objects in a Liminal Age Brad Anderson, Dublin City University 5. Being the Bible: Sacred Bodies and Iconic Books in Bring Your Bible to School Day Dorina Miller Parmenter, Spalding University 6. Body Building in the Hindu Tantric Tradition: The Advantages and Confusions of Scriptural Entextualization in the Worship of the Goddess Kali Rachel McDermott, Barnard College and Columbia University 7. Saints' Lives as Performance Art Virginia Burrus, Syracuse University 8. Aspiring Narratives of Previous Births: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Written and Visual Media in Ancient Gandhara Jason Neelis, Wilfrid Laurier University 9. Daoist Writs and Scriptures as Sacred Beings: With a Focus on Cosmological Meaning Jihyun Kim, Seoul National University 10. Books as Sacred Beings James W. Watts

Reviews

This collection challenges readers to think more expansively and daringly about books/texts and what beyond content-meanings they are about or, in my view of things, are made to mean or do. Such phenomenological interests are important in terms of making the attempt to fathom as widely and as deeply as possible the ongoing dynamics and effects of human-making. The volume will be of interest to scholars working in areas having to do with the history and theory and problematics of reading, of books, of embodiment and dynamics of sacralization. Vincent L. Wimbush, Ph.D., Director, Institute for Signifying Scriptures

Author Information

James W. Watts is Professor of Religion at Syracuse University. Yohan Yoo is Professor of Comparative Religion at Seoul National University. He is the author in Korean of Myths of Our Era (2012) and Religion, Symbolism, Human Beings (2014).

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