| Description |
xvii, 312 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm |
| Series |
Cambridge studies in religious traditions ; 8 |
|
Cambridge studies in religious traditions ; 8
|
| Contents |
1. Introduction: religion and the body / Sarah Coakley -- Pt. I. Contemporary Western Perspectives: Secularism and the Body. 2. The body in Western society: social theory and its perspectives / Bryan S. Turner. 3. Remarks on the anthropology of the body / Talal Asad. 4. The soul's successors: philosophy and the 'body' / Mary Midgley -- Pt. II. The Western Religious Inheritance: Judaism and Christianity on the Body. 5. The body in Jewish worship: three rituals examined / Louis Jacobs. 6. 'My helper and my enemy': the body in Greek Christianity / Kallistos Ware. 7. The body in Western Catholic Christianity / Andrew Louth. 8. The image of the body in the formative phases of the Protestant Reformation / David Tripp -- Pt. III. Beyond the West: Eastern Religious Traditions and the Body. 9. Zoroastrianism and the body / Alan Williams. 10. Medical and mythical constructions of the body in Hindu texts / Wendy Doniger. 11. The body in Theravada Buddhist monasticism / Steven Collins |
|
12. Some Mahayana Buddhist perspectives on the body / Paul Williams. 13. The Taoist body and cosmic prayer / Michael Saso. 14. Perceptions of the body in Japanese religion / Michael Pye. 15. 'I take off the dress of the body': Eros in Sufi literature and life / Annemarie Schimmel. 16. The body in Sikh tradition / Eleanor Nesbitt |
| Summary |
"The proliferation of studies on the 'body' (and subjects in close relation) is an obvious, even startling, feature of the literature of the social sciences and humanities in recent years. Such an explosion of interest makes the lack of a standard study of the 'body' and the major religions of the world the more surprising. In setting out to remedy this omission, Religion and the body aims above all to highlight the distinctive and unfamiliar ways in which diverse religious traditions understand the 'body', and also, in doing this, to raise to greater consciousness some of the assumptions and problems of contemporary attitudes to it." "This volume brings together essays by established experts in the history of religion, the social sciences, and philosophy. Part I is devoted to an analysis of current secularized discourses on the 'body', and to exposing both their anti-religious and their covertly religious content. Part II and III provide essays on traditional 'Western' and 'Eastern' religious attitudes to the 'body'."--Jacket |
| Notes |
Previous ed.: 1997 |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Subject |
Human body -- Religious aspects.
|
|
Human Body -- in folklore, mythology, & religion
|
|
Religion.
|
| Author |
Coakley, Sarah, 1951-
|
| LC no. |
96006474 |
| ISBN |
0521366690 (hbk.) |
|
0521783860 (paperback) |
|
