Following the heyday of Lévi-Straussian structuralism in the 1970s-80s, little attention has been paid by scholars of religion to semiotics. Semiotics of Religion reassesses key semiotic theories in the light of religious data. Yelle examines the semiotics of religion from structural and historical perspectives, drawing on Peircean linguistic anthropology, Jakobsonian poetics, comparative religion and several theological traditions. This book pays particular attention to the transformation of religious symbolism under modernization and the rise of a culture of the printed book. Building from the legacy of structuralism while interrogating several key doctrines of that movement, Semiotics of Religion both introduces the field to a new generation and charts a course for future research. 'This book is vast in scope, deep in implications, and admirably clear and forthright in exposition.The study of religion has needed a work of this kind, which brings together several research traditions and pushes the resulting synthesis in new directions.The result is an agenda-setting project of huge ambition.' - Webb Keane, University of Michigan, USA.