Description
Book SynopsisHuman cultures, especially religious groups but also secular artists and performers, often ritualize bodies as sacred books and books as divine beings. An international team of scholars addresses this theme of books as sacred beings in this volume through an impressively diverse range of primary material and perspectives. These studies show the wide variety of ways in which books, bodies, and beings intermingle in material sacred texts manipulated by human bodies, and also in literary and artistic depictions of transcendent textual bodies. The boundary between material immanence and spiritual transcendence turns out to be very thin indeed when people use books. The chapters on specific book practices in different cultures are bracketed by an introduction to the collection and by a concluding essay that extrapolates on the widespread theme of books as sacred beings.
Table of Contents1. Introduction James W. Watts 2. Performing Scriptures: Ritualizing Written Texts in Seolwi-seolgyeong, the Korean Shamanistic Recitation of Scriptures Yohan Yoo 3. Embodying the Qu’ran Katharina Wilkens, LMU Munich 4. Sacred Texts and the Digital Turn: Reflections on Scriptures as Material Objects in a Liminal Age Brad Anderson, Dublin City University 5. Being the Bible: Sacred Bodies and Iconic Books in Bring Your Bible to School Day Dorina Miller Parmenter, Spalding University 6. Body Building in the Hindu Tantric Tradition: The Advantages and Confusions of Scriptural Entextualization in the Worship of the Goddess Kali Rachel McDermott, Barnard College and Columbia University 7. Saints’ Lives as Performance Art Virginia Burrus, Syracuse University 8. Aspiring Narratives of Previous Births: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Written and Visual Media in Ancient Gandhara Jason Neelis, Wilfrid Laurier University 9. Daoist Writs and Scriptures as Sacred Beings: With a Focus on Cosmological Meaning Jihyun Kim, Seoul National University 10. Books as Sacred Beings James W. Watts
