Your search for: subjects:"Rites And Ceremonies"

"There is no other book even remotely like this. "Deeply into the Bone" is an exceptional, imaginative book on the topic of rites and the shaping of human life. Grimes is one of the few people who ably combines scholarly disciplines and perspectives with firsthand narratives, literary essays, films ...

"There is no other book even remotely like this. "Deeply into the Bone" is an exceptional, imaginative book on the topic of rites and the shaping of human life. Grimes is one of the few people who ably combines scholarly disciplines and perspectives with firsthand narratives, literary essays, films and observations of general culture. He is unquestionably a first-rate author and thinker, and this is an unquestionably magnificent book."--Lawrence Hoffman, author of "Covenant of Blood"

""Deeply into the Bone "is guaranteed to change our minds about ritual. Using a global and ethnic array of rites new and old, Grimes shows that contrary to popular belief, the ritual marking of life passages is anything "but" universal. By teaching us how to think comparatively we see that rites of passage are enduring rituals not for their uniformity, but because they serve as cornerstones for cultural and spiritual creativity and innovation."--Madeline Duntley, College of Wooster

From ritual killings to subtle acts of self-denial, the practice and rhetoric of sacrifice has a special centrality in modern American literature. In a compelling interdisciplinary investigation, Susan Mizruchi portrays an episode in American cultural history when the literary movement of realism ...

From ritual killings to subtle acts of self-denial, the practice and rhetoric of sacrifice has a special centrality in modern American literature. In a compelling interdisciplinary investigation, Susan Mizruchi portrays an episode in American cultural history when the literary movement of realism and the fledgling field of sociology both converged in the belief that sacrifice is basic to sociality. This is a book about the fascination that sacrifice held for writers--principally Herman Melville, Henry James, and W.E.B. Du Bois--and also for those who articulated the main tenets of modern social theory, an inquiry that eventually spans historical events such as public lynchings and the political scapegoating of immigrants a century ago.

The execution in "Billy Budd Sailor, the death of Du Bois's first-born son in "The Souls of Black Folk, Henry James's preoccupation with renunciation and scapegoating, and the self-denying working classes of Norris and Stein all illustrate repeated stagings ofsacrificial rituals from a Biblical past. For Mizruchi, the peculiar persistence of this aesthetic construct becomes a guide to a rich theologic

In 1927, Oxford University Press published the first western-language translation of a collection of Tibetan funerary texts (the Great Liberation upon Hearing in the Bardo) under the title The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Since that time, the work has established a powerful hold on the western popular ...

In 1927, Oxford University Press published the first western-language translation of a collection of Tibetan funerary texts (the Great Liberation upon Hearing in the Bardo) under the title The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Since that time, the work has established a powerful hold on the western popular imagination, and is now considered a classic of spiritual literature. Over the years, The Tibetan Book of the Dead has inspired numerous commentaries, an illustrated edition, a play, a video series, and even an opera. Translators, scholars, and popular devotees of the book have claimed to explain its esoteric ideas and reveal its hidden meaning. Few, however, have uttered a word about its history. Bryan J. Cuevas seeks to fill this gap in our knowledge by offering the first comprehensive historical study of the Great Liberation upon Hearing in the Bardo, and by grounding it firmly in the context of Tibetan history and culture. He begins by discussing the many ways the texts have been understood (and misunderstood) by westerners, beginning with its first editor, the Oxford-educated anthropologist Walter Y. Evans-Wentz, and continuing through the present day. The remarkable fame of the book in the west, Cuevas argues, is strikingly disproportionate to how the original Tibetan texts were perceived in their own country. Cuevas tells the story of how The Tibetan Book of the Dead was compiled in Tibet, of the lives of those who preserved and transmitted it, and explores the history of the rituals through which the life of the dead is imagined in Tibetan society. This book provides not only a fascinating look at a popular and enduring spiritual work, but also a much-needed corrective to the proliferation of ahistorical scholarship surrounding The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

Since 1989, scores of bodies across Eastern Europe have been exhumed and brought to rest in new gravesites. Katherine Verdery investigates why certain corpses -- the bodies of revolutionary leaders, heroes, artists, and other luminaries, as well as more humble folk -- have taken on a political life ...

Since 1989, scores of bodies across Eastern Europe have been exhumed and brought to rest in new gravesites. Katherine Verdery investigates why certain corpses -- the bodies of revolutionary leaders, heroes, artists, and other luminaries, as well as more humble folk -- have taken on a political life in the turbulent times following the end of Communist Party rule, and what roles they play in revising the past and reorienting the present. Enlivening and invigorating the dialogue on postsocialist politics, this imaginative study helps us understand the dynamic and deeply symbolic nature of politics -- and how it can breathe new life into old bones.