The editorial journey of the “Introductory lectures to the Science of Religion” (1870- 1899), by Professor F. Max Müller

Abstract

The article goes back to the founding document of the “Science of Religion,” Max Müller’s text, Lectures on the Science of Religion (1870). However, it is not a textual analysis, but an investigation of its paratextuality in a longitudinal perspective, where we reconstruct the editorial journey of this work based on its known editions, with information that helps us to (re)think the discipline more precisely in its formative context, in the 19th century, and the implications for research in this area. Operationally, we define the scope of the editorial set with which we work, describing its paratext in detail. In the last section, we present the work abroad translations, concluding some aspects relevant to the discipline’s meta-theory.