The Symbol, or the Problem of Meaning in the Modern World

Catalog description

Explores the modern invention of the symbol, in response to a problem of meaning created by the withdrawal of religious traditions in an increasingly secular world. Beginning with Edgar Allan Poe and ending with Clifford Geertz, we reconstruct the itinerary of the symbol as it passes through literature, philosophy, and anthropology. With one eye cast back on the religious background from which it emerged in nineteenth-century America, we will ask what the symbol inherits from religion, what it replaces but also what it preserves.