Bernard Faure

In The Fluid Pantheon Faure describes and analyzes through a series of case studies the impressive mythological and ritual efflorescence that marked the medieval period, not only in the religious domain, but also in the political, artistic, and literary spheres. Protectors and Predators continues Faure's examination of deities in medieval Japan and beyond. He argues here that the "wild" gods of Japan were at the center of the medieval religious landscape and came together in complex webs of association not divisible into the categories of "Buddhist," "indigenous," or "Shinto." In these volumes, he displays vast knowledge of his subject and presents his research-much of it in largely unstudied material-with theoretical sophistication. His arguments and analyses assume the centrality of the iconographic record, and so he has brought together a rich and rare collection of color and black-and-white images. This emphasis on iconography and the ways in which it complements, supplements, or deconstructs textual orthodoxy is critical to a fuller comprehension of a set of medieval Japanese beliefs and practices. It offers a corrective to the traditional division of the field into religious studies, which typically ignores the images, and art history, which oftentimes overlooks their ritual and religious meaning.

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