The Beecher Family

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter I
2. Preface V
3. Contents IX
4. Introduction 1
5. PART I: Essays in Sacred Biography
6. The Many Lives of Buddha 37
7. Following the Beloved 63
8. The Life of Saṅkarācārya 87
9. Religious Biography in India: The ‘Nectar of the Acts’ of Caitanya 109
10. PART II: Biographical Traditions and Individual Lives
11. The Story of Tukbaw: ‘They Listen as He Orates’ 121
12. Religious Paradigms and Political Action: 153
13. Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Birth of a Seer 187
14. Newman’s Illness in Sicily: The Reformer as Biographer 201
15. PART III: Individual Lives and Cultural Innovation
16. Personal Identity and Cultural Crisis 221
17. The Beecher Family 253
18. Psychohistory and Communal Patterns 273
19. The Uses and Limits of Psychobiography as an Approach to Popular Culture: The Case of ‘The Western’ 297
20. PART IV: From Individual Life to Hagiography
21. Kūkai as Master and Savior 319
22. The Death and ‘Lives’ of the Poet-Monk Saigyō 343
23. The Loneliness of Matsuo Bashō 363
24. Lincoln’s Martyrdom 393
25. Bibliography 413
26. Index of Proper Names 430