Semiotics of Religion: Signs of the Sacred in History (Bloomsbury Advances in Semiotics)

Following the heyday of Lévi-Straussian structuralism in the 1970s-80s, little attention has been paid by scholars of religion to semiotics. __Semiotics of Religion__ reassesses key semiotic theories in the light of religious data. Yelle examines the semiotics of religion from structural and historical perspectives, drawing on Peircean linguistic anthropology, Jakobsonian poetics, comparative religion and several theological traditions. This book pays particular attention to the transformation of religious symbolism under modernization and the rise of a culture of the printed book. Among the topics addressed are: - ritual repetition and the poetics of ritual performance - magic and the belief in a natural (iconic) language - Protestant literalism and iconoclasm - disenchantment and secularization - Holiness, arbitrariness, and agency Building from the legacy of structuralism while interrogating several key doctrines of that movement, __Semiotics of Religion__ both introduces the field to a new generation and charts a course for future research. Cover HalfTitle Series Title Copyright Dedication Contents Acknowledgments 1 Semiotics beyond structuralism Why a semiotics of religion? A brief critical survey of some semiotic theories of religion Semiotic recognition Bringing history to the semiotics of religion Outline of chapters 2 The poetics of ritual performance Toward a theory of poetic performance The rhetoric of spells The principles of spell-construction The function of spells The production of certainty: analogical punishments and trials by ordeal Chiasmus and communication Repetition, chiasmus, and salvation The reality of magic The question of deception: Pavlov’s dogs and dirty dancing Excursus: encounter with a fakir 3 Natural, arbitrary, and divine languages The naturalization of arbitrariness “The tyranny of taxonomies” “I pooh-pooh the purity”: etymologies in Hindu and British traditions “Natural language[s] of the hand”: gesture and the question of arbitrariness John Bulwer’s Chirologia and Chironomia Hindu dance: gesture in the Natyasastra Mudras in Hindu Tantra 4 Literalism, iconoclasm, and the question of the secular Literalism: what is old and what new? Iconoclasm and literalism Statutes versus statues: Bentham’s attack on the idols of language Semiotics and the question of the secular 5 Transformations in poetic performance: The coordination of Protestant literalism and print culture The repudiation of ritual: attacks on ritual repetition and poetic performance The literacy hypothesis “To have and to hold” The literacy hypothesis revisited 6 Arbitrariness, anomaly, and agency: A critique of Mary Douglas’s structuralist idea of the Holy Deist semiotics and the attack on revelation The dietary laws revisited Conclusion Religion and communication Arbitrariness and certainty From pragmatics to semantics, and back again Reason, autonomy, and the critique of the sign Last words Notes Bibliography Index
Following the heyday of Lévi-Straussian structuralism in the 1970s-80s, little attention has been paid by scholars of religion to semiotics. Semiotics of Religion reassesses key semiotic theories in the light of religious data. Yelle examines the semiotics of religion from structural and historical perspectives, drawing on Peircean linguistic anthropology, Jakobsonian poetics, comparative religion and several theological traditions. This book pays particular attention to the transformation of religious symbolism under modernization and the rise of a culture of the printed book. Among the topics addressed are:

- ritual repetition and the poetics of ritual performance
- magic and the belief in a natural (iconic) language
- Protestant literalism and iconoclasm
- disenchantment and secularization
- Holiness, arbitrariness, and agency

Building from the legacy of structuralism while interrogating several key doctrines of that movement, Semiotics of Religion both introduces the field to a new generation and charts a course for future research.