Date of Award

1-1-2018

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Organizational Unit

Joint Ph.D. Program in Study of Religion

First Advisor

Gregory Robbins, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Scott Howard

Third Advisor

Theodore Vial

Fourth Advisor

Katherine Turpin

Keywords

Aesthetics, Ambiguity, Literature, Materiality, S. Brent Plate, Umberto Eco

Abstract

This project expands S. Brent Plate's "invented religious aesthetics" by bringing it into conversation with Umberto Eco's theory of ambiguity. It articulates the space that ambiguity opens within the field of religious aesthetics when viewed as a liminal or interdisciplinary theory that neither privileges the starting points of transcendental aesthetics nor the "neo-arches" of theories of materiality. It hints at new ways of studying and describing religious worlds while also illustrating the porous borderlines between narrative and theory. It argues that a religious aesthetic rooted in ambiguity emphasizes both the provisionality of knowledge and the narrativization of reality.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Benjamin John Peters

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Format

application/pdf

Language

en

File Size

303 p.

Discipline

Philosophy of Religion, Aesthetics, Literature

Download



Share

COinS