Mircea Eliade`s Legacy for the Study of Religion in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

To mark the centennial of Mircea Eliade's birth, Professor Michel Gardez of the University of Ottawa and I co-edited a special issue of the journal Religion that will be published in December 2008. My article is entitled "Prologue: Encounters with Mircea Eliade and His Legacy for the Twenty-First Century." In my study, I suggest what my encounters with Eliade reveal about Eliade, his scholarship, and especially about his legacy. By delineating and analyzing encounters that were remarkable. disturbing, complex and contradictory, we may assess both strengths and weaknesses in Eliade's history and phenomenology of religion and what remains in Eliade' s legacy that may be of value for the contemporary study of religion.