Synopses & Reviews
In
The Quest Mircea Eliade stresses the cultural function that a study of the history of religions can play in a secularized society. He writes for the intelligent general reader in the hope that what he calls a new humanism "will be engendered by a confrontation of modern Western man with unknown or less familiar worlds of meaning."
"Each of these essays contains insights which will be fruitful and challenging for professional students of religion, but at the same time they all retain the kind of cultural relevance and clarity of style which makes them accessible to anyone seriously concerned with man and his religious possibilities."—Joseph M. Kitagawa, Religious Education
About the Author
Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) was the Sewell L. Avery Distinguished Service Professor at the Divinity School and professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. He was one of the most influential scholars of religion of the 20th century and one of the worlds foremost interpreters of religious symbolism and myth. Eliade was the author of many works of scholarship and fiction, including A History of Religious Ideas and ten novels.
Table of Contents
Preface
1. A New Humanism
2. The History of Religions in Retrospect: 1912 and After
3. The Quest for the "Origins" of Religion
4. Crisis and Renewal
5. Cosmogonic Myth and "Sacred History"
6. Paradise and Utopia: Mythical Geography and Eshatology
7. Initiation and the Modern World
8. Prolegomenon to Religious Dualism: Dyads and Polarities
Index