Rage and Ravage

Rage and Ravage

EnglishHardback
Faure Bernard
University of Hawai'i Press
EAN: 9780824886240
On order
Delivery on Monday, 10. of March 2025
CZK 2,101
Common price CZK 2,334
Discount 10%
pc
Do you want this product today?
Oxford Bookshop Praha Korunní
not available
Librairie Francophone Praha Štěpánská
not available
Oxford Bookshop Ostrava
not available
Oxford Bookshop Olomouc
not available
Oxford Bookshop Plzeň
not available
Oxford Bookshop Brno
not available
Oxford Bookshop Hradec Králové
not available
Oxford Bookshop České Budějovice
not available
Oxford Bookshop Liberec
not available

Detailed information

Written by one of the leading scholars of Japanese religion, Rage and Ravage is the third installment of a milestone project 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 introduces 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. Throughout, he engages theoretical insights draws 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?ì).

In volumes one and two, The Fluid Pantheon and Predators and Protectors, Faure argued against a polarity or dichotomy between buddhas and kami by emphasizing the existence of deities that did not belong to either category, and he rejected the retrospective notion of ""hybridity."" The present work makes a similar case about the reified distinction between gods and demons to show that, due to the fluid nature of the Japanese pantheon, these terms do not represent stable identities: gods can become demons, and demons are sometimes deified. Divine protectors were often former predators, and in some instances they retained their predatory features even after being converted. After emphasizing the demonic aspects of devas as ""gods or spirits of obstacles"" in the earlier volumes, Faure now focuses on the deva-like or ""divine"" aspects of deities that have been described as ""demonic.""

Rage and Ravage and its companion volumes 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.
EAN 9780824886240
ISBN 0824886240
Binding Hardback
Publisher University of Hawai'i Press
Publication date January 29, 2022
Pages 624
Language English
Dimensions 254 x 191
Country United States
Authors Faure Bernard
Illustrations 193 color and b&w illustrations|(1)
Manufacturer information
The manufacturer's contact information is currently not available online, we are working intensively on the axle. If you need information, write us on helpdesk@megabooks.sk, we will be happy to provide it.