ARLIS Colleagues,
A faculty member in Religious Studies at Brown University is
seeking the citation for a William Steig cartoon mentioned in
an article. It is not included in Cartoonbank.com, the obvious
online resource for New Yorker cartoons. The professor has also
had a student look for this cartoon in books at the library, but
with no success. Does anyone recall seeing this or have another
source to suggest?
Thanks,
Norine Duncan
Brown University
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Geertz, in his famous essay that amounts to an extended definition of
religion, reminds us that to be a religion the symbols of the culture
must be employed to "formulate conceptions of a general order of
existence," a "cosmic framework." He goes on:
That the symbols or symbol systems which induce and define dispositions
we set off as religious and those which place those dispositions in a
cosmic framework are the same symbols ought to occasion no surprise. For
what else do we mean by saying that a particular mood of awe is religious
and not secular, except that it springs from entertaining a conception of
all-pervading vitality like mana and not from a visit to the Grand
Canyon? …A man can indeed be said to be "religious" about golf,
but not merely if he pursues it with passion and plays it on Sundays: he
must also see it as symbolic of some transcendent truths.
And the pubescent boy gazing soulfully into the
eyes of the pubescent girl in a William Steig cartoon and murmuring,
"There is something about you, Ethel, which gives me a sort of
religious feeling," is, like most adolescents, confused. What
any particular religion affirms about the fundamental nature of reality
may be obscure, shallow, or, all too often, perverse; but it must, if it
is not to consist of the mere collection of received practices and
conventional sentiments we usually refer to as moralism, affirm
something.
__________________________________________________________________
Mail submissions to [log in to unmask]
For information about joining ARLIS/NA see:
http://www.arlisna.org//membership.html
Send administrative matters (file requests, subscription requests, etc)
to [log in to unmask]
ARLIS-L Archives and subscription maintenance:
http://lsv.uky.edu/archives/arlis-l.html
Questions may be addressed to list owner (Kerri Scannell) at: [log in to unmask]
