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Mircea Eliade

Born: 1907 in Bucharest, Romania
Died: 1996 in Chicago

Pen Name: None

Connection to Illinois: Eliade was a professor at the University of Chicago for many years.

Biography: Mircia Eliade was educated as a philosopher. He published extensively in the history of religions and acted as editor-in-chief of Macmillan's Encyclopedia of Religion. The influence of his thought, through these works and through thirty years as director of History of Religions department at the University of Chicago, is considerable.


Awards:

Primary Literary Genre(s): Fiction; Non-Fiction

Primary Audience(s): Adult readers

Mircea Eliade on WorldCat : http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=mircea++eliade+


Selected Titles

A history of religious ideas /
ISBN: 0226204014 OCLC: 3433560

Examines the religions of ancient China, Brahmanism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Celtic and German religions, Judaism, and Christianity, and explores each one's philosophical concepts.

Bengal nights
ISBN: 0226204197 OCLC: 37438565

University of Chicago Press, Chicago : 1995, ©1993.

A semi-autobiographical romance between a French engineer and the daughter of a Hindu family with which he stayed in India. A case of East meets West with all the joys and woes that such encounters bring. For her version of the story see her novel, It Does Not Die.

Bengal nights /
ISBN: 0226204189 OCLC: 27975009

A semi-autobiographical romance between a French engineer and the daughter of a Hindu family with which he stayed in India. A case of East meets West with all the joys and woes that such encounters bring. For her version of the story see her novel, It Does Not Die.

Images and symbols :
ISBN: 069102068X OCLC: 22597486

Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J. : ©1991.

Mircea Eliade--one of the most renowned expositors of the psychology of religion, mythology, and magic--shows that myth and symbol constitute a mode of thought that not only came before that of discursive and logical reasoning, but is still an essential function of human consciousness. The author describes and analyzes some of the most powerful and ubiquitous symbols that have ruled the mythological thinking of people of the East and West in many times and at many levels of cultural development.

  Images and symbols;
ISBN: 0836200381 OCLC: 179550

Sheed & Ward New York, [1961]

Patterns in comparative religion /
ISBN: 0803267339 OCLC: 35055570

University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln : [1996], ©1958.

Rites and symbols of initiation :
ISBN: 9780882143583 OCLC: 27678631

Spring Publications ; Dallas : ©1994.

Organizing data from cultures the world over, Eliade lays out the basic patterns of initiation: group puberty rites, entrance into secret cults, shamanic instruction, individual visions, and heroic rites of passage. The vast information, assembled so beautifully, transcends usual scholarship. Eliade always affirms the greater experience in all initiations - the indissoluble tie between humans and the cosmos of Gods, spirits, animals ancestors, and nature. The absence of initiation in our culture has left modern men and women often isolated from each other, from the invisible powers beyond, and from the myths that sustain daily life. The primal soul desire for symbolic rituals pushes youth into substitutes for initiatory experience: gangs, suicide, car crashes, teenage pregnancy, street drugs. These symptoms show the unquenchable urge for existential transformation and the need for elders, mentors, and rituals. This book is about crossing - from confusion to knowledge, from innocence to experienced elder.

Shamanism :
ISBN: 0691119422 OCLC: 702181649

Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ : 2004.

First published in 1951, this book soon became the standard work in the study of this mysterious and fascinating phenomenon. Writing as the founder of the modern study of the history of religion, Romanian eacute; migreacute;--scholar Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) surveys the practice of Shamanism over two and a half millennia of human history, moving from the Shamanic traditions of Siberia and Central Asia--where Shamanism was first observed--to North and South America, Indonesia, Tibet, China, and beyond. In this authoritative survey, Eliade illuminates the magico-religious life of societies that give primacy of place to the figure of the Shaman--at once magician and medicine man, healer and miracle-doer, priest, mystic, and poet. Synthesizing the approaches of psychology, sociology, and ethnology, this work will remain for years to come the reference book of choice for those intrigued by this practice.

The forge and the crucible /
ISBN: 0226203905 OCLC: 4873250

University of Chicago Press, Chicago : 1978.

Primitive man's discovery of the ability to change matter from one state to another brought about a profound change in spiritual behavior. In The Forge and the Crucible, Mircea Eliade follows the ritualistic adventures of these ancient societies, adventures rooted in the people's awareness of an awesome new power. The new edition of The Forge and the Crucible contains an updated appendix, in which Eliade lists works on Chinese alchemy. He also discusses the importance of alchemy in Newton's scientific revolution. -- from back cover.

The myth of the eternal return :
ISBN: 0691123500 OCLC: 60587580

Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ : 2005.

"This founding work of the history of religions, first published in English in 1954, secured the North American reputation of the Romanian emigre-scholar Mircea Eliade (1907-1986). Making reference to an astonishing number of cultures and drawing on scholarship published in no less than half a dozen European languages, Eliade's The Myth of the Eternal Return makes both intelligible and compelling the religious expressions and activities of a wide variety of archaic and "primitive" religious cultures. While acknowledging that a return to the "archaic" is no longer possible, Eliade passionately insists on the value of understanding this view in order to enrich our contemporary imagination of what it is to be human. Jonathan Z. Smith's new introduction provides the contextual background to the book and presents a critical outline of Eliade's argument in a way that encourages readers to engage in an informed conversation with this classic text."--Jacket.

Yoga :
ISBN: 9780691142036 OCLC: 320801195

Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ : 2009.

First published in English in 1958, the author lays the groundwork for a Western understanding of Yoga, providing a comprehensive survey of Yoga in theory and practice from its earliest antecedents in the Vedas through the twentieth century.

 

 

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