ritual: References & Edit History
More Articles On This Topic
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Additional Reading
William Lessa and Evon Z. Vogt, Reader in Comparative Religion, 3rd ed. (1971), is a good general anthology on classical and modern positions on religion, ritual, and myth (mainly concerned with nonliterate cultures), with an excellent bibliography. Gods and Rituals, ed. by John Middleton (1967), contains a good collection of essays on ritual practices in nonliterate cultures, also with a fine bibliography. Among the classic texts dealing with the origin of ritual and religion, there are three authors who have enduring influence: W. Robertson Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (1889); Émile Durkheim, Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse (1912; Eng. trans., The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, 1965); and Sigmund Freud, Totem und Tabu (1913; Eng. trans., Totem and Taboo, 1918). Among the classic positions on a functional approach to ritual are those of Bronisław Malinowski, Coral Gardens and Their Magic, 2 vol. (1935); and A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, The Andaman Islanders (1922). More recent examples of the functional approach are the anthropological texts of E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Nuer Religion (1956); and Edmund Leach, Political Systems of Highland Burma (1954). Melford E. Spiro, Burmese Supernaturalism (1967), is one of the best critical texts using data from Burmese Buddhism as support for a revised approach. Victor W. Turner, The Forest of Symbols (1967), represents a novel analysis of dominant symbols in belief and ritual. Among valuable approaches by theologians and historians of religion are Rudolf Otto, Das Heilige (1917; Eng. trans., The Idea of the Holy, 1923); and Joachim Wach, The Comparative Study of Religions (1958). Jane E. Harrison, Themis, 2nd ed. rev. (1927); and S.H. Hooke (ed.), Myth, Ritual and Kingship (1958), are good examples of the myth-ritual school. An excellent critique of this school may be found in Joseph E. Fontenrose, The Ritual Theory of Myth (1966). Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss, Essai sur la nature et le fonction du sacrifice (1899; Eng. trans., Sacrifice: Its Nature and Function, 1964), remains a standard analysis of sacrifice as ritual. Arnold van Gennep, Les Rites de passage (Eng. trans., The Rites of Passage, 1960), although written in 1909, continues to be an important work on ritual as a marker of passage. Mircea Eliade, Birth and Rebirth (1958), is an excellent historical study of ritual as initiation, with a good bibliography. See also Bruce Lincoln, Emerging from the Chrysalis: Studies in Rituals of Women’s Initiation (1981).
Article Contributors
Primary Contributors
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Hans H. Penner
Professor of Religion, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire. Author of articles on structuralism, myth, and ritual.
Other Encyclopedia Britannica Contributors
Article History
| Type | Description | Contributor | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Modified link of Web site: Social Sciences Libretexts - Ritual. | Apr 04, 2025 | ||
| Add new Web site: Encyclopedia of Religion and Society - Ritual. | Oct 11, 2024 | ||
| Changed heading for “rites of passage.” | Aug 20, 2024 | ||
| Add new Web site: The Royal Society Publishing - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B - Ritual explained: interdisciplinary answers to Tinbergen's four questions. | Jun 13, 2024 | ||
| Add new Web site: McClintock and Strong Biblical Cyclopedia - Ritual. | Mar 12, 2024 | ||
| Add new Web site: Social Sciences Libretexts - Ritual. | Feb 02, 2024 | ||
| Add new Web site: PressbooksOER - Beliefs: An Open Invitation to the Anthropology of Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion - Ritual. | Dec 11, 2023 | ||
| Images added. | Dec 07, 2016 | ||
| Article revised and updated. | Dec 07, 2016 | ||
| Add new Web site: Academia - Ritual (PDF). | Apr 04, 2016 | ||
| Changed "The Netherlands" to "the Netherlands." | Sep 08, 2010 | ||
| Media added. | Jul 12, 2007 | ||
| Article revised. | Oct 23, 1998 | ||
| Article added to new online database. | Sep 19, 1998 |