The Myth of the Eternal Return: Or, Cosmos and History

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0691017778 ISBN 13: 9780691017778

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1971

This founding work of the history of religions, first published in English in 1954, secured the North American reputation of the Romanian émigré-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.

About the Author:

Born in Bucharest in 1907, Mircea Eliade was for many years Sewell L. Avery Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago. He is the author of, among other books, Shamanism, Images and Symbols, and Yoga (all Princeton).

Review:

"A luminous, profound, and extremely stimulating work. . . . This is an essay which anyone interested in the history of religion and the mentality of ancient man will have to read." (Review of Religion)

"Profound and pregnant research in the psychology of time and the intuitive forms of the mind as revealed by the early cultures' attitude toward history." (Nation)