This volume is the first English language presentation of the innovative approaches developed in the aesthetics of religion . The chapters present diverse material and detailed analysis on descriptive, methodological and theoretical concepts that together explore the potential of an aesthetic approach for investigating religion as a sensory and mediated practice. In dialogue with, yet different from, other major movements in the field (material culture, anthropology of the senses, for instance), it is the specific intent of this approach to create a framework for understanding the interplay between sensory, cognitive and socio-cultural aspects of world-construction. The volume demonstrates that aesthetics, as a theory of sensory knowledge, offers an elaborate repertoire of concepts that can help to understand religious traditions. These approaches take into account contemporary developments in scientific theories of perception, neuro-aesthetics and cultural studies, highlighting the socio-cultural and political context informing how humans perceive themselves and the world around them. Developing since the 1990s, the aesthetic approach has responded to debates in the study of religion, in particular striving to overcome biased categories that confined religion either to texts and abstract beliefs, or to an indisputable sui generis mode of experience. This volume documents what has been achieved to date, its significance for the study of religion and for interdisciplinary scholarship.
**
About the Author
Jay Johnston , University of Sydney, Australia and Alexandra Grieser , Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.
Foreword 6
Table of Contents 10
What is an Aesthetics of Religion? From the Senses to Meaning—and Back Again 16
List of Figures 66
PART I. Fields and Topics 72
Grasping the Formless in Stones: The Petromorphic Gods of the Hindu Pañcāyatanapūjā 74
Religion, Literature, and the Aesthetics of Expressionism 90
Screening the Father of Lights: Documentary Film and the Aesthetics of the Nonfictional in Contemporary Religion 118
The Literary Aesthetics of Religious Narratives: Probing Literary-Aesthetic Form, Emotion, and Sensory Effects in Exodus 7–11 136
PART II. History and Politics 160
Below the Horizon of Meaning: Figuration, Disfiguration, Transfiguration 162
The Performative Knowledge of Ecstasy: Jane E. Harrison’s (1850–1928) Early Contestations of the Textual Paradigm in Religious Studies 176
What Does a Reformed City Look Like? – Changes in Visible Religion During the Reformation in Bremen 204
Standing, Not Walking – The Hieratic as a Key Term of an Anthropologically Based Aesthetics of Religion 226
PART III. Comparison and Transfer 250
Blue Brains: Aesthetic Ideologies and the Formation of Knowledge Between Religion and Science 252
Aesthetic Dimensions and Transformative Dynamics of Mimetic Acts: The Veneration of Habib-i Neccar Among Muslims and Christians in Antakya, Turkey 286
Aestheticisation and the Production of (Religious) Space in Chennai 316
Moving Religion by Sound: On the Effectiveness of the Nāda-Brahman in India and Modern Europe 338
PART IV. Concepts and Theories 362
Esoteric Aesthetics: The Spiritual Matter of Intersubjective Encounter 364
Aesthetics of Immersion: Collective Effervescence, Bodily Synchronisation and the Sensory Navigation of the Sacred 382
The Governance of Aesthetic Subjects Through Body Knowledge and Affect Economies. A Cognitive-Aesthetic Approach 404
Religion in the Flesh: Non-Reductive Materialism and the Ecological Aesthetics of Religion 428
PART V. In Conversation: Essays About the Connectivity of an Aesthetics of Religion 450
Subjects and Sense-Making 452
Consumer Culture and the Sensory Remodelling of Religion 462
Social Aesthetics, Atmosphere and Proprioception 472
Semiotics and Aesthetics: Historical and Structural Connections 480
The Artificiality of Aesthetics: Making Connections on the Erie Canal 488
Authors Biographies 498
Index 506

upload/motw_shc_2025_10/shc/Aesthetics of Religion_ A Conne - Alexandra K. Grieser.pdf

motw/Aesthetics of Religion_ A Conne - Alexandra K. Grieser.pdf

Aesthetics of Religion (Religion and Reason, 58)

Grieser, Alexandra K., Johnston, Jay

Saur, K. G., Verlag. ein Imprint der Walter de Gruyter GmbH

düsseldorf university press. in Walter de Gruyter GmbH

de Gruyter, Walter, GmbH

Religion and reason, 58, Berlin ; Boston, 2017

Germany, Germany

1, 2017-12-18

producers:
iTextSharp 5.0.6 (c) 1T3XT BVBA

Memory of the World Librarian: Calamitous Annunciation

2025-10-27