Religion, Culture, and Sacred Space

by M. Smith

Overview

Religion, Culture, and Sacred Spaces is a comparative exploration into the nature of the human relationship to physical space advancing the startling thesis that the human capacity for narrative and identity imbues landscapes with meaning and sacredness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780230608306
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	11/17/2008
Edition description:	2008
Pages:	184
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	3 Months

About the Author

MARTYN SMITH is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Lawrence University, USA.

Table of Contents

How to Build Places with Words Abydos: Inventing a Landscape Delos: The Soft Power of Poetry Mecca: Through the Eyes of a Pilgrim A Storied Wilderness

Editorial Reviews

"Smith has produced a fascinating study of narratives that center on sacred places. Through a deeply layered reading of texts, stories, and narratives he shows how places are associated with, are imbued, and transformed by the memories, histories, and constructed identities of religious groups. His study, besides being of value to scholars of literature and narrative, will appeal to those interested in how places come to be regarded as sacred places, and to those interested in debates about the nature of the sacred and how it may be produced; it will also appeal to scholars of pilgrimage, who will find in his excavation of the narratives associated with specific places, much to aid them in their understanding of how places not only attract visitors but, crucially, how the narratives of place shape and frame the ways in which such places are seen and experienced by pilgrims." - Ian Reader, University of Manchester

From the Publisher