Robert A. Yelle is Assistant Professor at the Department of History and the Helen Hardin Honors Program, University of Memphis, USA.

This book is vast in scope, deep in implications, and admirably clear and forthright in exposition.The study of religion has needed a work of this kind, which brings together several research traditions and pushes the resulting synthesis in new directions. The result is an agenda-setting project of huge ambition. -- Webb Keane, University of Michigan, USA Semiotics of Religion displays sensational semiotic sensitivity in analyzing the practical poetics of performance - the 'pragmatics' of performativity - of various expressions of the religious life.From this perspective and with great erudition, Yelle then engages the four-hundred-year-long European Enlightenment drive both stipulatively and interpretatively to 'semanticize' religious practice - as also language itself - in an ideological project of containment that has been central to institutionalizing 'disenchanted modernity.' In this enchanting book Yelle demonstrates a more inclusive semiotics of religion. -- Michael Silverstein, Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago, USA A deep and engaging book sure to pique the interests of researchers in both semiotics and religion. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, faculty. -- J. L. Best, St. Thomas University CHOICE

• 1. Introduction \ 2. Distinctive Features of Religious Symbolism and Language \ 3. Natural and Artificial Languages \ 4. The Semiotics of Ritual Form \ 5. The Attack on Semiotic Form \ 6. Protestant Literalism and Print Culture \ 7. Signs of Salvation \ Bibliography \ Index

Robert A. Yelle is Assistant Professor at the Department of History and the Helen Hardin Honors Program, University of Memphis, USA.

This book is vast in scope, deep in implications, and admirably clear and forthright in exposition.The study of religion has needed a work of this kind, which brings together several research traditions and pushes the resulting synthesis in new directions. The result is an agenda-setting project of huge ambition. -- Webb Keane, University of Michigan, USA Semiotics of Religion displays sensational semiotic sensitivity in analyzing the practical poetics of performance - the 'pragmatics' of performativity - of various expressions of the religious life.From this perspective and with great erudition, Yelle then engages the four-hundred-year-long European Enlightenment drive both stipulatively and interpretatively to 'semanticize' religious practice - as also language itself - in an ideological project of containment that has been central to institutionalizing 'disenchanted modernity.' In this enchanting book Yelle demonstrates a more inclusive semiotics of religion. -- Michael Silverstein, Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago, USA A deep and engaging book sure to pique the interests of researchers in both semiotics and religion. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, faculty. -- J. L. Best, St. Thomas University CHOICE

• 1. Introduction \ 2. Distinctive Features of Religious Symbolism and Language \ 3. Natural and Artificial Languages \ 4. The Semiotics of Ritual Form \ 5. The Attack on Semiotic Form \ 6. Protestant Literalism and Print Culture \ 7. Signs of Salvation \ Bibliography \ Index

Robert A. Yelle is Assistant Professor at the Department of History and the Helen Hardin Honors Program, University of Memphis, USA.

This book is vast in scope, deep in implications, and admirably clear and forthright in exposition.The study of religion has needed a work of this kind, which brings together several research traditions and pushes the resulting synthesis in new directions. The result is an agenda-setting project of huge ambition. -- Webb Keane, University of Michigan, USA Semiotics of Religion displays sensational semiotic sensitivity in analyzing the practical poetics of performance - the 'pragmatics' of performativity - of various expressions of the religious life.From this perspective and with great erudition, Yelle then engages the four-hundred-year-long European Enlightenment drive both stipulatively and interpretatively to 'semanticize' religious practice - as also language itself - in an ideological project of containment that has been central to institutionalizing 'disenchanted modernity.' In this enchanting book Yelle demonstrates a more inclusive semiotics of religion. -- Michael Silverstein, Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago, USA A deep and engaging book sure to pique the interests of researchers in both semiotics and religion. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, faculty. -- J. L. Best, St. Thomas University CHOICE

• 1. Introduction \ 2. Distinctive Features of Religious Symbolism and Language \ 3. Natural and Artificial Languages \ 4. The Semiotics of Ritual Form \ 5. The Attack on Semiotic Form \ 6. Protestant Literalism and Print Culture \ 7. Signs of Salvation \ Bibliography \ Index