Abstract
In his analysis of the Bible, entitled The Great Code, Northrop Frye1 observed the history of the Israelites to be an unstable one. First there was obscurity and marginality. Next, prophetic intervention renewed faith and solidarity. Thence came triumph and empire—but after that things would go wrong. Complacency produced decadence, fractious infighting, and broken covenants. Failure, humiliation, and exile followed. The cycle would begin again. This tidal periodicity moving over generations accounts for the epic feel of the Old Testament, as if Nietzsche’s myth of eternal return were playing out through the destiny of a people.
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Notes
Frye, Northrop. 1982. The Great Code: The Bible and Literature. New York. Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovitch.
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York. Basic Books.
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Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1963. Structural Anthropology. Boston. Basic Books.
Sewell, William Jr. 1980. Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848. New York. Cambridge University Press.
Hunt, Lynn. 1984. Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution. Berkeley. University of California Press.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. 1988. Action and Its Environments: Toward a New Synthesis. New York: Columbia University Press.
Wagner-Pacifici, Robin. 1986. The Moro Morality Play. Chicago. University of Chicago Press
Greenblatt, Stephen. 1988. Shakespearean Negotiations. Berkeley. University of California Press.
Schweder, Richard, and Byron Good. 2005. Clifford Geertz by His Colleagues. Chicago. University of Chicago Press.
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© 2011 Jeffrey C. Alexander, Philip Smith, and Matthew Norton
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Alexander, J.C., Smith, P. (2011). Introduction: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Clifford Geertz. In: Alexander, J.C., Smith, P., Norton, M. (eds) Interpreting Clifford Geertz. Cultural Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230118980_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230118980_1
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