Ritual Syntax Revisited
The syntactic analysis of ritual initiated by Frits Staal (1979) provides an effective means for the study of differences between rituals within a particular ritual culture, of changes to a ritual over time, and of changes as rituals are transmitted from one ritual culture to another. The utility of...
| Published in: | Numen |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brill
2022
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| In: |
Numen
Year: 2022, Volume: 69, Issue: 4, Pages: 390-420 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Staal, Frits 1930-2012
/ Ritual
/ Parsing
/ Penner, Hans H. 1934-2012
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| RelBib Classification: | AA Study of religion AD Sociology of religion; religious policy AG Religious life; material religion |
| Further subjects: | B
Frits Staal
B ritual syntax B Hans Penner B tantric rituals B diagramming ritual structures B Formalism |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | The syntactic analysis of ritual initiated by Frits Staal (1979) provides an effective means for the study of differences between rituals within a particular ritual culture, of changes to a ritual over time, and of changes as rituals are transmitted from one ritual culture to another. The utility of a syntactic approach continues to be obscured by Hans Penner’s critique (1985), which when examined in the first section of this article, “Clearing the Ground,” proves to be faulty. Despite Penner’s critique, some scholars have employed syntactic analyses, and the work of five of them is discussed in the second section, “Existing Constructive Projects.” The following section, “Foundations,” examines the methodological bases of ritual syntax – formalism and abstraction, the difference between production and analysis – and distinguishes three levels of syntactic analysis that parallel linguistic analyses of sentences and sentence structures. The final section, “Extending the Construction,” further develops the technical aspects of a syntactic analysis of ritual into new areas, including alternative diagramming of syntactic structures. |
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| ISSN: | 1568-5276 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Numen
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/15685276-12341664 |