Geographies of the Sacred in Postcolonial Literatures

Abstract

We are gathered here these few days, according to the conference title, to contemplate "The Spirit of Place: Source of the Sacred." Contemplation of this kind, I suggest, must take account of the figure of Mircea Eliade. Eliade's work, I am sure, is familiar to practically everyone here. Romanian by birth, collector of insects, novelist, and most famously, itinerant student and interpreter of the sacred traditions of humankind, Eliade is, for better or for worse, the godfather of that field of scholarship in the western academy which usually goes under the name of History of Religions or Comparative Religion.