Walter Benjamin, Religion and Aesthetics: Rethinking Religion through the Arts / Edition 1

by S. Brent Plate

Overview

Walter Benjamin, Religion, and Aesthetics is an innovative and creative attempt to unsettle and reconceive the key concepts of religious studies through a reading with, and against, Walter Benjamin. Constructing what he calls an "allegorical aesthetics," Plate sifts through Benjamin's writings showing how his concepts of art, allegory, and experience undo traditionally stabilizing religious concepts such as myth, symbol, memory, narrative, creation, and redemption.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415969925
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/12/2004
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	188
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

S. Brent Plate is Assistant Professor of Religion at Texas Christian University has published widely on religion and visual culture, film, and aesthetics. His edited collections include the forthcoming Religion and World Cinema: Filmmaking, Mythmaking, Culture Making (2003) and Religion, Art, and Visual Culture: A Cross-Cultural Reader (2002).

Table of Contents

Prescript: The Religious Uses of Benjamin i Acknowledgements viii Abbreviations used ix List of Illustrationsx Introduction: Creative Aesthetics Creating Religion 1 Chapter One: Aesthetics (I): From the Body to the Mind and Back 22 Chapter Two: Allegorical Aesthetics 59 Chapter Three: Working Art: The Aesthetics of Technological Reproduction 138 Chapter Four: Aesthetics (II): Building the Communal Sense 209 Bibliography 244