Canonical Texts: Selections from Religious Wisdom Traditions is the first anthology of its kind that serves as an entry point for students into some of the most profound ideas of the ages. This collection of readings of sacred texts is drawn from the central canons of religious traditions from around the world. Selections from Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Native Traditions are compiled for their readability. They are carefully edited by Professor Thomas Jerome Burns, who situates each tradition and its canonical work, so that the student has a blueprint to engage the text. Key features of Canonical Texts include: - Delivers a rare combination of both primary sources and meaningful commentary upon them, integrated into one volume. - Designed for the student with no academic background in the respective traditions, while providing a rigorous yet accessible introduction. - Encourages students to consider many of the central ideas of the world's major wisdom traditions. Thomas Jerome Burns, editor, received his PhD in Sociology in 1990 from the University of Maryland, and currently is Professor of Sociology and a faculty member in Religious Studies at the University of Oklahoma. He was formerly on the faculty at the University of Utah, where he won the College of Social and Behavioral Science's Superior Teaching Award. In his research, Professor Burns examines how cultural and organizational systems, such as religion, education and politics develop in relation to one another in light of their comparative and historical contexts, and how those systems have social outcomes in terms of human well being and long-term sustainability.

This book introduces a new approach to the comparative study of sacred texts - here the Christian Bible, the Islamic Koran, the Hindu Veda and the Buddhist Tipiaka. The author demonstrates that, in spite of their great differences, these works show a fundamental analogy.Considered as canonical within their own religious context, each text possesses absolute authority in comparison with other authoritative texts from their respective religious traditions. This fundamental analogy allows one to describe the growth and history of these canons, step by step, as a process that takes place in analogous phases that are clearly distinguishable. The author follows a strictly phenomenological method: he tries to understand the development of these canons in terms of a potential that lies within the phenomena themselves, i.e. the texts, while refraining in any way from assessing their claim to absolute authority. In part I the author describes the development from the 'revelation' of the texts to a climax with respect to reflection on the canons. This climax has been reached in all four cases. Part II investigates the crisis that these canons are currently undergoing as a consequence of the modern intellectual climate. Can we expect that this crisis will be overcome by the canons? And if so, will they be in a position of mutual exclusion or will they form a sort of unity such as, for example, the Old and New Testament in the Christian Bible? Finally the author traces what the religions themselves have postulated about the future of their respective canons. The result is surprising: the current crisis is only faint reflection of what, according to age-old predictions, awaits the canons in the future.

A comparative intercultural study of the techniques applied by scholars throughout the world to deal with problematic texts and artifacts.

Adaptations of canonical texts have played an important role throughout the history of children's literature and have been seen as an active and vital contributing force in establishing a common ground for intercultural communication across generations and borders. This collection analyses different examples of adapting canonical texts in or for children's literature encompassing adaptations of English classics for children and young adult readers and intercultural adaptations of children's classics across Europe. The international contributors assess both historical and transcultural adaptation in relation to historically and regionally contingent concepts of childhood. By assessing how texts move across age-specific or national borders, they examine the traces of a common literary and cultural heritage in European children's literature.

In this collection of richly documented case studies, experts in many textual traditions examine the ways in which important texts were preserved, explicated, corrected, and used for a variety of purposes. The authors describe the multiple ways in which scholars in different cultures have addressed some of the same tasks, revealing both radical differences and striking similarities in textual practices across space, time and linguistic borders. This volume shows how much is learned when historians of scholarship, like contemporary historians of science, focus on earlier scholars' practices, and when Western scholarly traditions are treated as part of a much larger, cross-cultural inquiry.

Our foremost literary critic on our most essential writers, from Emerson and Whitman to Hurston and Ellison, from Faulkner and O'Connor to Ursula K. LeGuin and Philip Roth. No critic has better understood the ways writers influence one another—how literary traditions are made—and no writer has helped readers understand this better, than Harold Bloom. Over the course of a remarkable sixty-year career, in such bestselling books as The Western Canon, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, and How to Read and Why, Bloom brought enormous insight and infectious enthusiasm to the great writers of the Western tradition, from Shakespeare and Cervantes to the British Romantics and the Russian masters. Now, for the first time, comes a collection of his brilliant writings about the American tradition, the ultimate guide to our nation’s literature. Assembled with David Mikics (Slow Reading in a Hurried Age), this unprecedented collection gathers five decades’ worth of Bloom’s writings— much of it hard to find and long unavailable—including essays, occasional pieces, and introductions as well as excerpts from his books. It offers deep readings of 47 essential American writers, reflecting on the surprising ways they have influenced each other across more than two centuries. The story it tells, of American literature as a recurring artistic struggle for selfhood, speaks to the passion and power of the American spirit. All of the visionary American writers who have long preoccupied Bloom―Emerson and Whitman, Hawthorne and Melville, and Dickinson, Faulkner, Crane, Frost, Stevens, and Bishop―make their appearance in The American Canon, along with Hemingway, James, O’Connor, Ellison, Hurston, Le Guin, Ashbery and many others. Bloom’s passion for these classic writers is contagious, and he reminds readers how they have shaped our sense of who we are, and how they can summon us to be better versions of ourselves. Bloom, Mikics writes, “is still our most inspirational critic, still the man who can enlighten us by telling us to read as if our lives depended on it: Because, he insists, they do.” For readers who want to deepen their appreciation of American literature, there's no better place to start than The American Canon.

In the last decade alone, the world has changed in seismic ways as marriage equality has been ruled on by the supreme court, social justice issues such as #metoo and BlackLivesMatter have arisen, and issues of immigration and deportation have come to the forefront of politics across the globe. Thus, there is a need for an updated text that shares strategies for combining canonical and young adult literature that reflects the changes society has – and continues to - experience. The purpose of our collection is to offer secondary (6-12) teachers engaging ideas and approaches for pairing young adult and canonical novels to provide unique examinations of topics that teaching either text in isolation could not afford. Our collection does not center canonical texts and most chapters show how both texts complement each other rather than the young adult text being only an extension of the canonical. Within each volume, the chapters are organized chronologically according to the publication date of the canonical text. The pairings offered in this collection allow for comparisons in some cases, for extensions in others, and for critique in all.