Synopses & Reviews
More than two decades have passed since Chicago published the first volume of this groundbreaking work in the Religion and Postmodernism series. It quickly became influential across a wide range of disciplines and helped to make the tools of poststructuralist thought available to religious studies and theology, especially in the areas of late medieval and early modern mysticism.
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Though the second volume remained in fragments at the time of his death, Michel de Certeau had the foresight to leave his literary executor detailed instructions for its completion, which formed the basis for the present work. Together, both volumes solidify Certeauandrsquo;s place as a touchstone of twentieth-century literature and philosophy, and continue his exploration of the paradoxes of historiography; the construction of social reality through practice, testimony, and belief; the theorization of speech in angelology and glossolalia; and the interplay of prose and poetry in discourses of the ineffable. This book will be of vital interest to scholars in religious studies, theology, philosophy, history, and literature.
Synopsis
A leading intellectual member of France's Freudian school, Michel de Certeau combined principles from the disciplines of religion, history, and psychoanalysis in order to redefine historiography and rethink the categories of history. In The Writing of History, de Certeau examines the West's changing conceptions of the very role and nature of history itself, from the seventeenth-century attempts to formulate a history of man to Freud's Moses and Monotheism with which de Certeau interprets historical practice as a function of mankind's feelings of loss, mourning, and absence. Exhaustively researched and stunningly innovative, The Writing of History is a crucial introduction to de Certeau's work and is destined to become a classic of modern thought.
Synopsis
From the seventeenth-century attempts to formulate a history of man to Freud's Moses and Monotheism, de Certeau examines the West's changing conceptions of the role and nature of history.
Synopsis
It has been twenty-two years since the Press published the first volume of and#147;The Mystic Fableand#8221; in the Religion and Postmodernism series. The first volume quickly became influential across a wide range of humanistic disciplines and helped to make the tools of poststructuralist thought available to religious studies and theological contexts, especially in the areas of late medieval and early modern mysticism. Volume two has long been anticipated, but it had to wait for Certeauand#8217;s literary executor to gather the fragments after Certeauand#8217;s death, and compile them into a coherent book. Together, both volumes solidify Certeauand#8217;s place in French literary and philosophical circles, and continue his exploration of several interrelated areas, including the paradoxes of historiography, the construction of social reality through practice, testimony, and belief, the theorization of speech in angelology and glossalalia, and the interplay of prose and poetry in discourses of the ineffable. The book will be eagerly read and used by scholars in religious studies, theology, philosophy, history, and literary studies.
About the Author
Michel de Certeau (1925andndash;86) was a philosopher, historian, and Jesuit. He is the author of The Practice of Everyday Life, Heterologies: Discourse on the Other, and The Writing of History, in addition to The Mystic Fable, Volume One and The Possession at Loudun, both published by the University of Chicago Press.