Mircea Eliade

Forthcoming, Spring 2027

The short essays in this volume are just some examples of the early political and periodical writing of Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) available for the first time in English translation. They have been selected from among the more than 5,500 documents left to this volume's editor by the scholar and Eliade biographer Mac Linscott Ricketts (1930-2022), who took his Ph.D. under Eliade in Chicago.

That Eliade was among the most influential of 20th-century public intellectuals is undisputed. But attitudes and approaches to Eliade are divided sharply over assessments of many things: the coherence of his personal philosophy, putative implicit theology, his ontology; the value of his contributions to history of religions; his “mystical” tendencies; his perspective on gender; and particularly over accusations of fascist affiliations and antisemitic sentiments. The material selected for this volume focuses on Eliade’s periodical writing particularly before he became established in Chicago after 1956. It is a rich source for clarifying his outlook on all of these issues but especially on his putative sexism and his political position, topics which cannot be accurately determined from reference to the body of his work on the history of religions already published and easily available in English.

The volume will therefore be of interest and assistance to anyone researching intellectual history, developments in inter-war Romania and Eastern Europe, the history and the development of the History of Religions, or the specific case of Mircea Eliade and his intellectual development.