Friedrich Max Müller and the Sacred Books of the East
Friedrich Max Müller and the Sacred Books of the East
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Hardback
£112.50
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Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198784234
Number of Pages: 248
Published: 04/08/2016
Width: 14.1 cm
Height: 22.3 cm
This volume offers a critical analysis of one the most ambitious editorial projects of late Victorian Britain: the edition of the fifty substantial volumes of the Sacred Books of the East (1879-1910). The series was edited and conceptualized by Friedrich Max Müller (1823-1900), a world-famous German-born philologist, orientalist, and religious scholar. Müller and his influential Oxford colleagues secured financial support from the India Office of the British Empire and from Oxford University Press. Arie L. Molendijk documents how the series has become a landmark in the development of the humanities-especially the study of religion and language-in the second half of the nineteenth century. The edition also contributed significantly to the Western perception of the 'religious' or even 'mystic' East, which was textually represented in English translations. The series was a token of the rise of 'big science' and textualized the East, by selecting their 'sacred books' and bringing them under the power of western scholarship.
Introduction
1: The Right Honourable Max Müller
2: The Making of a Series
3: Concepts & Ideas
4: Methods
5: Religion of Humanity
6: Intellectual Impact
Conclusion
Bibliography
This is an important and eminently readable book. * Lukas Pokorny, University of Vienna, Religious Studies Review * This book is primarily useful in providing some of the background that informed the making of the SBE series. * Reading Religion * [T]here are real rewards to be found in [Molendijk's book]...Above all, it is good to see an entire volume dedicated to Muller, who, although a frequent guest star in studies of Victorian literature, rarely receives sustained attention himself. * Sebastian LeCourt, Victorian Studies * Arie Molendijks history of that vast publishing project offers a fascinating glimpse of an emerging academic field, as well as a startling portrait of a truly transdisciplinary scholar intent on proving that Eastern religions were essential for an understanding of Western culture. * Janet M. Powers, Religion * Since the series as such has rarely been the object of close historical research ... Molendijks monograph is an original and very welcome contribution. ... the first part of the book is largely narrative and full of interesting observations and anecdotes, while the second is more analytical and reflective and has shorter chapters. Altogether this makes reading the book as a whole an easy, but reflective and rewarding experience. * Christoph Uehlinger, Religion *
