Religion and Literature Case Study - Mythanalysis

Religions, vol. 12, 2021

This paper offers a general overview of the highly complicated topic of religious and mythological consciousness discussed in sub-species narrative critique and literary theory. It also provides a detailed context for the wide array of religious matters discussed in this special volume of "Religions". Also addressed are the uneasy ways in which Christian Orthodoxy has handled the various challenges posed by popular belief and mythology. Most existing studies are somewhat dated, prompting a growing need for fresh scholarly approaches and reassessments concerning both officially sanctioned and heterodox religious practices. A basic aim, therefore, is to bring together archaic forms of religious spirituality, creative literature, folklore, philosophy and theology, a synthesis which, we hope, will illumine the ways in which mythologies and religious traditions inform ideas and artistic practices, past and present. One of the underlying and unifying elements here is myth. After all, religion begins and ends with myth, while the contemporary endurance of myth and the complex cultural theoretical suggestions associated with its cultural and literary usage remain entirely relevant and topical. "Religions", Vol. 12 (St. Alban-Anlage, Basel, Switzerland) ISSN: 2077-1444

2018

Religion is a natural aspect of human race which grows out of human’s desire for meaning and belonging. Even if we try to get rid of one religion, we create another religion. Best or worst, humans seem to be motivated by religion. It represents a cultural and national identity. Myth’s philosophical importance is underestimated in that its role has been ignored simply because it is literary or argued as so much as window dressing by analytic interpreters of philosophy. The relation between ‘myth and ‘religion’ is an old and much-discussed topic. However, there are fewer agreements around the phenomenology of the two terms and their functional relation.

Vestnik Tomskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Filosofiya, sotsiologiya, politologiya, 2017

2011

The personality of Metropolitan Bartolomeu Valeriu Anania has been extremely complex, first of all due to the various domains of his work - literature, essays, art history, theology and biblical theology -, and secondly due to his relation to politics, especially his connections with the Legionary Movement and with Communism. Despite having been incarcerated as a political prisoner in some of Bolshevik Romania's famous prisons (Jilava, Pitești, Aiud), Bartolomeu Valeriu Anania is still accused of having collaborated with the political police of Ceaușescu's regime, Securitatea. The present text analyses the writer's work in order to explain the relationship between religion, literature, and politics, stressing both their connections, as well as his journey from being a writer to being the theologian commenting on and revising the translation of the Holy Scripture. The analysis is therefore oriented towards Valeriu Anania's literary works, namely his poetry, prose, and...

El estudio de la religión egipcia ofrece un abanico tan grande de posibilidades de aproximación y una variedad temática tan amplia que demanda en no pocas ocasiones de una sistematización para su abordaje. Ello no significa intentos de estructuración de un panteón tan disímil y en apariencias contradictorio tal como intentaron los primeros egiptólogos, sino una ordenación que respete la diacronía pero que simultáneamente reconozca la subyacencia de una sincronía que se mantuvo por más de 3000 años. El estudio de la religión egipcia en general, sus dioses, sus relaciones, sus cosmogonías, sus cosmologías, entre otros tópicos serán puestos a consideración, así como los soportes en que cada uno de ellos son plasmados. De aquí, una introducción a los diferentes corpora funerarios deviene en herramienta fundamental para entender el contexto de cada complejo religioso. En este marco, emprender la ardua tarea de intentar reconstruir creencias religiosas, no significa ni la omisión del mundo que circunda y origina estas creencias, ni el desconocimiento de una realidad social que la carga de contenido. En este sentido, lo que se procura es tomar en cuenta todos los factores posibles a partir de cuya convergencia se comienzan a configurar las creencias religiosas o el “contenido teológico” de las mismas. Un estudio de exégesis como el que aquí se propone no puede desconocer el Sitz im Leben de un texto en el sentido más básico de la expresión, esto es, su pragmática o el modo en que el contexto incide en la interpretación del significado. Se plantea en este seminario una visión integral que lejos de desconocer cuestiones de índole más técnica -semiótica, semántica, funciones culturales, interacciones entre las creencias con el individuo y su mundo histórico, etc.- las toma por separado para luego aglutinarlas y bosquejar de este modo visiones de conjunto. Para concluir, interpretar textos no significa reposar en un cómodo refugio de ideas que, antojadizas, brotan de una imaginación fértil que desconoce las variadas realidades que las originaron. Muy por el contrario, es precisamente quien interpreta quien más debe precaverse de análisis parciales, descontextualizados y a-históricos.

In this contribution, it is argued that the concept of 'imagination' should be restored to the status of ac rucial keyt ermi nt he studyo fr eligion. More specifically, attention is focused here on the importance of the historical imagination as an object of research (as distinct from its importance as af actor in research) and its relation to strict historicity.T he dynamics of the historical imagination can be analyzedi nt erms of ad ouble polarity:f actualityv ersus non-factuality and poeticity versus non-poeticity.H istorical narrativesw ith a highd egree of poeticity tend to be remembereda nd have an impact on readers even if they are factuallyinaccurate, while narrativeswith alow degree of poet-icity tend to be disregarded or forgotten even if they are factuallya ccurate. Against this background, four influential historical 'grand narratives' are analyzed: (1) the Renaissance and predominantlyCatholic story of 'ancient wisdom' through the ages; (2)its negative counterpart inspired by Protestant polemics, referred to as the story of 'pagan error' through the ages; (3) the Enlightenment story of progress through rational 'Enlightenment';a nd (4) its counterpart more congenialt oR omantic sentiments, the story of ap rogressive 'education of Humanity.' Such imaginative narrativesh aveas trongi mpact because they are able to engagethe emotions, and hence we need to analyze how specific nar-rativesafford specific economies of emotionality. Because religious grand narra-tivesare the reflection of highlyeclectic types of historiography, they need to be countered by an anti-eclectic historiographyt hat does not sacrifice factuality to poeticity.A nd yet, it is at least as important for historians to accept the task of tellingn ew 'true stories' about religion too:n arrativest hat engaget he imagination of their readersw ithout sacrificing nuance, complexity,a nd factual accuracy.

Anne-Marie Thiesse testified that in letters, the echo of the "epic coming from the bottom of the centuries" is constantly heard. According to her, songs collected by Macpherson with the passion of the storyteller, are the substrates upon which the creation of literature transforms the great codes of different ethnicities into transcendental codes. This kind of search for the resurrection of epic ash in the letters could not carry the different ethnic and cultural feelings of the people, unless they were linked to the sign of their origin, i.e. by searching for the predecessors of a group who believes in some common values and cultivates them from generation to generation. These ancestors may be different: family members, a religious community, an ethnic community, or members of a religious community that unites the right and memories, or a cultural community, that unite some common symbols. In terms of the resurrection of "epic grace letter," they constitute a social category distinct from other categories by the language, customs, myths, religion, etc. The myths in which they believe constitute the way how they treat themselves througout history. Our paper aims to discuss this relationship between the myth and literature and the memory for common values, which at some point appear as an essence in artistic works. The scope is to analyze the report that memory has with myths and the way how both affect literature. The paper tries to study a complex relationship between letters and myths, applying it to a pattern: The Medieval Literature.

., In-cognita: Ioan Petru Culianu’s Approaches to Religion, 2021

Ioan Petru Culianu’s scientific work unfortunately remained unfinished. His major contributions to the fields of Renaissance studies, ecstatic experiences, and Gnosticism, as well as to the historiography of the history of religions, delineate an itinerary from historical hermeneutics to a radical epistemological shift illustrated by his last books, and especially by the periodical he founded and directed: Incognita: International Journal for Cognitive Studies in the Humanities (1990–1991). Thirty years after his tragic death, this collective volume is meant to address Culianu’s intellectual legacy from different methodological perspectives. A thorough analysis of his various investigations in the history of religions is presented alongside a critical evaluation of his final cognitivist theory of religion as a system. Exploring Ioan Petru Culianu’s stimulating and innovative work is thus one way to honour his brilliant mind and his passionate quest for meaning.

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