We see that javascript is disabled or not supported by your browser - javascript is needed for important actions on the site. Read more

What's New - Home - Login

Member $avings: $81,570,566.94 | Books Available: 795,194 | Members Online: 237

Swap Used Books - Buy New Books at Great Prices!

How To Swap Books Sign Up Search submenu

PBS Market (New Books)

Gift Buying Guide

Book Browser Advanced Search Books Posted Today Member Book Reviews Award Winning Books NYT Best Sellers Amazon Best Sellers Most Traveled Copies Club Wish List

Discussion Forums Book Lists

Club Lists My Book Lists My Watched Lists Create a List

Blog Donations

School Donation Program In Memory of... Military Donation Program Friends of PBS

Box-O-Books Maps The Eclectic Pen Fun Stuff

20 Questions Sudoku Bookmark Creator

Top 100

Requests Posts Swappers Referrers Reviewers

Pulse of PBS Spread The Word

Invite Friends Bookmarks Facebook Page Facebook App More Ways...

Photo Gallery Recipes Club Tag Cloud Member Testimonials

Help Center submenu

How To Swap Books Browse Help Docs Ask the Librarian PBS Member Icons Live Help

Kiosk

PBS Market (New Books) Go Shopping Buy Credits Buy PBS Money Upgrade Membership Gift Certificates Transfer Credits

Need Help?

Search - The Fluid Pantheon (Gods of Medieval Japan)

The Fluid Pantheon - Gods of Medieval Japan
Author: Bernard Faure

Written by one of the leading scholars of Japanese religion, The Fluid Pantheon is the first installment of a multivolume project that promises to be a milestone in our understanding of the mythico-ritual system of esoteric Buddhism--specifically the nature and roles of deities in the religious world of medieval Japan and beyond. Bernard Faure i... more »ntroduces readers to medieval Japanese religiosity and shows the centrality of the gods in religious discourse and ritual; in doing so he moves away from the usual textual, historical, and sociological approaches that constitute the "method" of current religious studies. The approach considers the gods (including buddhas and demons) as meaningful and powerful interlocutors and not merely as cyphers for social groups or projections of the human mind. Throughout he engages insights drawn from structuralism, post-structuralism, and Actor-network theory to retrieve the "implicit pantheon" (as opposed to the "explicit orthodox pantheon") of esoteric Japanese Buddhism (Mikky?). Through a number of case studies, Faure describes and analyzes the impressive mythological and ritual efflorescence that marked the medieval period, not only in the religious domain, but also in the political, artistic, and literary spheres. He displays vast knowledge of his subject and presents his research--much of it in largely unstudied material--with theoretical sophistication. His arguments and analyses assume the centrality of the iconographic record, and so he has brought together in this volume a rich and rare collection of more than 180 color and black-and-white images. This emphasis on iconography and the ways in which it complements, supplements, or deconstructs textual orthodoxy is critical to a fuller comprehension of a set of medieval Japanese beliefs and practices. It also offers a corrective to the traditional division of the field into religious studies, which typically ignores the images, and art history, which oftentimes overlooks their ritual and religious meaning. The Fluid Pantheon and its companion volumes should persuade readers that the gods constituted a central part of medieval Japanese religion and that the latter cannot be reduced to a simplistic confrontation, parallelism, or complementarity between some monolithic teachings known as "Buddhism" and "Shinto." Once these reductionist labels and categories are discarded, a new and fascinating religious landscape begins to unfold.

ISBN-13: 9780824839338
ISBN-10: 0824839331
Pages: 496
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Univ of Hawaii Pr
Book Type: Hardcover
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Genres:

History >> Asia >> Japan
Categories >> Kindle eBooks >> Religion & Spirituality >> Buddhism
Religion & Spirituality >> Buddhism >> History
Religion & Spirituality >> Religious Studies >> Comparative Religion
Nonfiction >> Social Sciences >> Folklore & Mythology

Back to the Top ↑

Search - The Fluid Pantheon (Gods of Medieval Japan)

Loading...