Category Archives: Mircea Eliade

Vladimir Nabokov’s original and unpublished translation of The Discourse of Igor’s Campaign; and Roman Jakobson’s enduring wish to complete his English edition

In two previous pieces in the ‘Sunday Histories’ series, I have discussed the planned but unrealised collaboration between Vladimir Nabokov and Roman Jakobson on an edition and translation of “The Song of Igor”, an old Russian poem of the 12th century. Jakobson had … Continue reading

Posted in Georges Dumézil, Mircea Eliade, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized, Vladimir Nabokov | 4 Comments

Books received – Febvre, Hiltebeitel, Comaroff, Kantorowicz, Glyph 7, Gadoffre, Eliade & Couliano, Harvey

Books received – mostly bought second-hand, but also Joshua Comaroff, Spectropolis: The Enchantment of Capital in Singapore, sent by University of Minnesota Press, and Ernst Kantorowicz, Radiances: Unpublished Essays on Gods, Kingship, and Images of the State, edited by Robert E. Lerner, … Continue reading

Posted in David Harvey, Ernst Kantorowicz, Mircea Eliade, Sunday Histories | 3 Comments

Ryan L. Allen, Adventures in the Archaic: Primitivism, Degrowth, and the French Social Sciences, 1945-1975 – University of Chicago Press, January 2026

Ryan L. Allen, Adventures in the Archaic: Primitivism, Degrowth, and the French Social Sciences, 1945-1975 – University of Chicago Press, January 2026 Examines how four intellectuals with ties to the French social sciences articulated a new primitivist sensibility between 1945 … Continue reading

Posted in Georges Bataille, Henri Lefebvre, Mircea Eliade | Leave a comment

Hadi Fakhoury ed., New Perspectives on Henry Corbin – Palgrave Macmillan, July 2025

Hadi Fakhoury ed., New Perspectives on Henry Corbin – Palgrave Macmillan, July 2025 This collection brings together scholars from various fields to explore the work, life, and legacy of Henry Corbin (1903–1978), a towering figure in the modern study of … Continue reading

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, Mircea Eliade | Leave a comment

Gillian Rose and the Indo-Europeanists

While I’ve been working on my Indo-European thought project, I’ve looked at a few books from the University of Warwick’s library which came from the Gillian Rose collection. Some of the books from that collection could not be borrowed – ones … Continue reading

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Gillian Rose, Mircea Eliade, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Indo-European Thought in Twentieth-Century France update 28: archives in Princeton, Chicago and final work in New York

I’ve continued my work with archives in the USA over the past several weeks. Some of this has been in relation to the Indo-European Thought project, but I’ve managed to work on some peripheral things too.I had two days in Princeton, … Continue reading

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Edward Said, Emile Benveniste, Ernst Kantorowicz, Georges Dumézil, Jacques Derrida, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Michel Foucault, Mircea Eliade, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Vladimir Nabokov | 1 Comment

The Murder of Ioan Culianu – Eliade, Anton, Eco, Lincoln and the University of Chicago

The story sounds like a detective novel or a spy thriller. A professor of the history of religion at the University of Chicago is shot at close range in the third-floor bathroom of Swift Hall in 1991. The killing is … Continue reading

Posted in Mircea Eliade, Sunday Histories, Umberto Eco, Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Indo-European Thought in Twentieth-Century France update 27: more archive work on Saussure, Blanchot, Foucault, Jakobson and Koyré, two recordings, and a talk at the University at Buffalo

I’ve been doing a lot more work in archives in the United States for this project over the past few weeks. I had a few days up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which was even colder than New York. There, I was … Continue reading

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Claude Lévi-Strauss, David Farrell Krell, Emile Benveniste, Ernst Kantorowicz, Ferdinand de Saussure, Georges Dumézil, Hannah Arendt, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Blanchot, Michel Foucault, Mircea Eliade, Roman Jakobson | 1 Comment

My favourite academic books of 2024

At the end of each year I’ve posted a list of academic books I liked. The criteria was that they were published in that year (or late the previous one), and that I read and liked them. Many of the … Continue reading

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Eduardo Mendieta, Fredric Jameson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gillian Rose, Karl Marx, Michel Foucault, Mircea Eliade, Stefanos Geroulanos, Territory, Theory, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Indo-European Thought in Twentieth-Century France update 19: back to Dumézil, politics, and Benveniste in Persia and Afghanistan

Since the last update on this project, I have begun work on a chapter on Dumézil’s career from the late 1930s to the late 1940s. This is another fascinating period, partly because of the range of books he published – 14 in 11 … Continue reading

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Carlo Ginzburg, Emile Benveniste, Ernst Kantorowicz, Georges Dumézil, Michel Foucault, Mircea Eliade, Uncategorized | 2 Comments