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Homo Necans
''Homo Necans: the Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth'' (german: Homo Necans: Interpretationen Altgriechischer Opferriten und Mythen) is a 1972 book on ancient Greek religion and mythology by the classicist Walter Burkert. It won the Weaver Award for Scholarly Literature, awarded by the Ingersoll Foundation, in 1992. Summary Burkert's core thesis is that when paleolithic man became a hunter, in spite of the generally omnivorous orientation of the great apes, lack of a predator instinct was made up for by turning patterns of intra-species aggression against the prey: ''Homo necans'' means "man the killer". Thus, the animal hunted by ancient man automatically acquired aspects of an equal, as if it were of one of the hunter's relations. In a first attempt at applying ethology to religious history, Burkert confronts the power and effect of tradition in uncovering traces of ancient hunting rituals so motivated in historical animal sacrifice and human sacrifi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walter Burkert
Walter Burkert (; 2 February 1931 – 11 March 2015) was a German scholar of Greek mythology and cult. A professor of classics at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, he taught in the UK and the US. He has influenced generations of students of religion since the 1960s, combining in the modern way the findings of archaeology and epigraphy with the work of poets, historians, and philosophers. He was a member of both the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He published books on the balance between lore and science among the followers of Pythagoras, and more extensively on ritual and archaic cult survival, on the ritual killing at the heart of religion, on mystery religions, and on the reception in the Hellenic world of Near Eastern and Persian culture, which sets Greek religion in its wider Aegean and Near Eastern context. First academic era Burkert was born in Neuendettelsau. He married Maria Bosch in 1957 and they had three ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ritual
A ritual is a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, actions, or objects, performed according to a set sequence. Rituals may be prescribed by the traditions of a community, including a religious community. Rituals are characterized, but not defined, by formalism, traditionalism, invariance, rule-governance, sacral symbolism, and performance. Rituals are a feature of all known human societies. They include not only the worship rites and sacraments of organized religions and cults, but also rites of passage, atonement and purification rites, oaths of allegiance, dedication ceremonies, coronations and presidential inaugurations, marriages, funerals and more. Even common actions like hand-shaking and saying "hello" may be termed as ''rituals''. The field of ritual studies has seen a number of conflicting definitions of the term. One given by Kyriakidis is that a ritual is an outsider's or " etic" category for a set activity (or set of actions) that, to the outs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Times Literary Supplement
''The Times Literary Supplement'' (''TLS'') is a weekly literary review published in London by News UK, a subsidiary of News Corp. History The ''TLS'' first appeared in 1902 as a supplement to ''The Times'' but became a separate publication in 1914. Many distinguished writers have contributed, including T. S. Eliot, Henry James and Virginia Woolf. Reviews were normally anonymous until 1974, when signed reviews were gradually introduced during the editorship of John Gross. This aroused great controversy. "Anonymity had once been appropriate when it was a general rule at other publications, but it had ceased to be so", Gross said. "In addition I personally felt that reviewers ought to take responsibility for their opinions." Martin Amis was a member of the editorial staff early in his career. Philip Larkin's poem "Aubade", his final poetic work, was first published in the Christmas-week issue of the ''TLS'' in 1977. While it has long been regarded as one of the world's pre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Parker (historian)
Robert Christopher Towneley Parker, FBA (born 19 October 1950) is a British ancient historian, specialising in ancient Greek religion and Greek epigraphy. Robert Parker was educated at St Paul's School, London and at New College, Oxford under Geoffrey de Ste Croix. From 1996 until his retirement in 2016 he was the Wykeham Professor of Ancient History at New College, Oxford University. Before that, from 1976–96, he was Tutor in Greek and Latin Languages and Literature at Oriel College, Oxford. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1998. He is also a Foreign Member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, an Officier of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques in France, and a Member of the Academia Europaea. In 2013 he was the 99th Sather Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Select Works Books * ''Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek religion''. Oxford, 1983. * ''Athenian Religion: A History''. Oxford (Clarendon Press), 1996. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Gay
Peter Joachim Gay (né Fröhlich; June 20, 1923 – May 12, 2015) was a German-American historian, educator, and author. He was a Sterling Professor of History at Yale University and former director of the New York Public Library's Center for Scholars and Writers (1997–2003). He received the American Historical Association's (AHA) Award for Scholarly Distinction in 2004. He authored over 25 books, including '' The Enlightenment: An Interpretation'', a two-volume award winner; '' Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider'' (1968), a bestseller; and the widely translated '' Freud: A Life for Our Time'' (1988). Gay was born in Berlin in 1923 and emigrated, via Cuba, to the United States in 1941. From 1948 to 1955 he was a political science professor at Columbia University, and then a history professor from 1955 to 1969. He left Columbia in 1969 to join Yale University's History Department as Professor of Comparative and Intellectual European History and was named Sterling Professor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Violence And The Sacred
''Violence and the Sacred'' (french: La violence et le sacré) is a 1972 book about the sacred by the French critic René Girard, in which the author explores the ritual role of sacrifice. The book received both positive reviews, which praised Girard's theory of the sacred, and more mixed assessments. Some commentators have seen the book as a work that expresses or points toward a Christian religious perspective. However, the book has also been seen as "atheistic" or "hostile to religion". ''Violence and the Sacred'' became highly influential, in anthropology, literary criticism, and even Christology. It has been compared to the classicist Walter Burkert's ''Homo Necans'' (1972). Girard further developed its ideas in a subsequent book, ''Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World'' (1978). Summary Girard discusses the ritual role of sacrifice, seeking to explain the fact that it sometimes appears as "a sacred obligation to be neglected at grave peril" and it other times ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
René Girard
René Noël Théophile Girard (; ; 25 December 1923 – 4 November 2015) was a French polymath, historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science whose work belongs to the tradition of philosophical anthropology. Girard was the author of nearly thirty books, with his writings spanning many academic domains. Although the reception of his work is different in each of these areas, there is a growing body of secondary literature on his work and his influence on disciplines such as literary criticism, critical theory, anthropology, theology, mythology, sociology, economics, cultural studies, and philosophy. Girard's main contribution to philosophy, and in turn to other disciplines, was in the psychology of desire. Girard claimed that human desire functions imitatively, or mimetically, rather than arising as the spontaneous byproduct of human individuality, as much of theoretical psychology had assumed. Girard found that human development proceeds triangularly from a mode ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Structuralism
In sociology, anthropology, archaeology, history, philosophy, and linguistics, structuralism is a general theory of culture and methodology that implies that elements of human culture must be understood by way of their relationship to a broader system. It works to uncover the structures that underlie all the things that humans do, think, perceive, and feel. Alternatively, as summarized by philosopher Simon Blackburn, structuralism is: Blackburn, Simon, ed. 2008. "Structuralism." In '' Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy'' (2nd rev. ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. . p. 353. e belief that phenomena of human life are not intelligible except through their interrelations. These relations constitute a structure, and behind local variations in the surface phenomena there are constant laws of abstract structure.Structuralism in Europe developed in the early 20th century, mainly in France and the Russian Empire, in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subseque ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jane Ellen Harrison
Jane Ellen Harrison (9 September 1850 – 15 April 1928) was a British classical scholar and linguist. Harrison is one of the founders, with Karl Kerenyi and Walter Burkert, of modern studies in Ancient Greek religion and mythology. She applied 19th-century archaeological discoveries to the interpretation of ancient Greek religion in ways that have become standard. She has also been credited with being the first woman to obtain a post in England as a ‘career academic’. Harrison argued for women's suffrage but thought she would never want to vote herself. Ellen Wordsworth Crofts, later second wife of Sir Francis Darwin, was Jane Harrison's best friend from her student days at Newnham, and during the period from 1898 to her death in 1928. Life and career Harrison was born in Cottingham, Yorkshire on 9 September 1850 to Charles and Elizabeth Harrison. Her mother died of puerperal fever shortly after she was born and she was educated by a series of governesses. Her gove ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Functionalism (sociology)
Structural functionalism, or simply functionalism, is "a framework for building theory that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability". This approach looks at society through a macro-level orientation, which is a broad focus on the social structures that shape society as a whole, and believes that society has evolved like organisms. This approach looks at both social structure and social functions. Functionalism addresses society as a whole in terms of the function of its constituent elements; namely norms, customs, traditions, and institutions. A common analogy, popularized by Herbert Spencer, presents theses parts of society as "organs" that work toward the proper functioning of the "body" as a whole. In the most basic terms, it simply emphasizes "the effort to impute, as rigorously as possible, to each feature, custom, or practice, its effect on the functioning of a supposedly stable, cohesive system". For Talcott Parsons ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cult (religion)
Cult is the care (Latin: ''cultus'') owed to deities and temples, shrines, or churches. Cult is embodied in ritual and ceremony. Its present or former presence is made concrete in temples, shrines and churches, and cult images, including votive offerings at votive sites. Etymology Cicero defined '' religio'' as ''cultus deorum'', "the cultivation of the gods." The "cultivation" necessary to maintain a specific deity was that god's ''cultus,'' "cult," and required "the knowledge of giving the gods their due" ''(scientia colendorum deorum)''. The noun ''cultus'' originates from the past participle of the verb ''colo, colere, colui, cultus'', "to tend, take care of, cultivate," originally meaning "to dwell in, inhabit" and thus "to tend, cultivate land ''(ager)''; to practice agriculture," an activity fundamental to Roman identity even when Rome as a political center had become fully urbanized. ''Cultus'' is often translated as "cult" without the negative connotations th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hunting Hypothesis
In paleoanthropology, the hunting hypothesis is the hypothesis that human evolution was primarily influenced by the activity of hunting for relatively large and fast animals, and that the activity of hunting distinguished human ancestors from other hominins. While it is undisputed that early humans were hunters, the importance of this fact for the final steps in the emergence of the genus ''Homo'' out of earlier australopithecines, with its bipedalism and production of stone tools (from about 2.5 million years ago), and eventually also control of fire (from about 1.5 million years ago), is emphasized in the "hunting hypothesis", and de-emphasized in scenarios that stress the omnivore status of humans as their recipe for success, and social interaction, including mating behaviour as essential in the emergence of language and culture. Advocates of the hunting hypothesis tend to believe that tool use and toolmaking essential to effective hunting were an extremely important p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
