THE MAGIC OF BOOKS: A DISCOURSE HISTORICAL APPROACH TOWARDS MEDIEVAL LEARNED MAGIC AND LITERATURE

Abstract

This study offers a novel approach to the study of religion's "critical categories," which is receiving greater attention: How can researchers handle flexible or polyvalent ideas that lack commonly agreed-upon conceptualizations and often elicit misconceptions or even intense disagreements over their correct use? Instead of unilaterally lowering the semantic depth of these categories by "definitions," the essay proposes recognizing polysemantic as a key characteristic or unavoidable aspect of many, if not every, essential category in the study of religion. Similarly, the study offers a new methodological tool called "polysemantic analysis," which has two parts: narrative analysis and intellectual reverse engineering that deconstruct a contested category into a semantic matrix, or "net of conceptions," which can then be used to analyses religious data. This method applies a polysemantic notion to religious data without losing its analytical usefulness, enabling more sophisticated and fine-grained analysis. The study applies such a method to "religious individualization," a process classification that has garnered increased academic interest. "Polysemantic analysis" shows a matrix with category conceptions in four domains. This "net of conceptions" is then used to "magic" conceptual history, both polemical and positive. a number of certain ambiguities, the written text history of "Western taught magic" activates a broad variety of "religious induced cognitive" ideas and might serve as an especially notable example of these kinds of dynamics.