Touched by His Noodly Appendages: Parody Religions as a Window to (the Perception of) Religious Belief and Practice
CERES Palais, room "Ruhrpott" (4.13)
Metaphor Talk by Prof. Dr. Stefan Hartmann (HHU Düsseldorf)
This talk introduces the project "Mocking Metaphor: The construal of transcendence in parody religions", which is envisaged as project B07 for the second phase of CRC 1475. Parody religions are constructed belief systems that are usually devised as a satirical means of mocking the idea of religious belief per se, and/or certain elements that are (perceived to be) characteristic of extant religions. They present a particularly interesting and challenging test case for better understanding the role of metaphoricity as the central principle of religious meaning-making. The main goal of the project is to explore how the transcendence/immanence divide is metaphorically construed in parody religions, how parody religions make use of deliberately incongruent metaphorical mappings for satirical purposes, and what this tells us about the perception of religion from a (largely) "outside" perspective.
