Description: It has been twenty-two years since the Press published the first volume of "The Mystic Fable" in the Religion and Postmodernism series. The first volume quickly became influential across a wide range of humanistic disciplines and helped to make the tools of poststructuralist thought available to religious studies and theological contexts, especially in the areas of late medieval and early modern mysticism. Volume two has long been anticipated, but it had to wait for Certeau's literary executor to gather the fragments after Certeau's death, and compile them into a coherent book. Together, both volumes solidify Certeau's place in French literary and philosophical circles, and continue his exploration of several interrelated areas, including the paradoxes of historiography, the construction of social reality through practice, testimony, and belief, the theorization of speech in angelology and glossalalia, and the interplay of prose and poetry in discourses of the ineffable. The book will be eagerly read and used by scholars in religious studies, theology, philosophy, history, and literary studies.
Brief description:
At the time of his death in 1986, Michel de Certeau was a director of studies at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris. Of his many books, The Practice of Everyday Life, The Writing of History, and Heterologies: Discourse on the Other are available in English translation.
Review Quotes: "The Mystic Fable is a work of the first importance in its examination of early modern mystics. It continues and expands upon Certeau's life-long project of understanding how we define ourselves in relation to others. The present, second volume provides an argument for which readers of Certeau have been waiting a long time--and they will not be disappointed. Certeau himself explained that the first volume of Mystic Fable traces the constitution of a "new science" (mystical speech) and its enunciation in the speaking subject. The second volume, continued Certeau, is the presentation of the contents of this science. Brilliantly and intelligently edited and introduced by the scholar Luce Giard, Mystic Fable II is the product of a singularly gifted and innovative philosopher."-- "Françoise Meltzer, University of Chicago"