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Theology and Literature after Postmodernity
Theology and Literature after Postmodernity
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Description
This volume deploys theology in a reconstructive approach to contemporary literary criticism, to validate and exemplify theological readings of literary texts as a creative exercise. It engages in a dialogue with interdisciplinary approaches to literature in which theology is alert and responsive to the challenges following postmodernism and postmodern literary criticism. It demonstrates the scope and explanatory power of theological readings across various texts and literary genres. Theology and Literature after Postmodernity explores a reconstructive approach to reading and literary study in the university setting, with contributions from interdisciplinary scholars worldwide.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Stanley Hauerwas, Duke University, USA
Introduction: Hospitable Conversations in Theology and Literature: Re-opening a Space to be Human
The Editors
Part One: Pedagogy
1. Religion, History, and Faithful Reading
Susannah Brietz Monta, University of Notre Dame, USA
2. Theology, Literature and Prayer: A Pedagogical Suggestion
Vittorio Montemaggi, University of Notre Dame, US
3. Bleak Liturgies: R. S. Thomas and 'changes not to his liking'
Hester Jones, University of Bristol, UK
Part Two: Theological and Literary Reconstructions
4. Belief and Imagination
Graham Ward, Christ Church, University of Oxford, UK
5. Literary Apologetics beyond Postmodernism: Duality and Death in Philip Pullman and J.K. Rowling
Alison Milbank, University of Nottingham, UK
6. Cusa: A Pre-modern Postmodern Reader of Shakespeare
Johannes Hoff, Heythrop College, UK and Peter Hampson, Blackfriars Hall, UK
7.'The One Life within Us and Abroad': Pathetic Fallacy Reconsidered
Gavin Hopps, University of St Andrews, UK
8. Love Among the Ruins: Hermeneutics of Theology and Literature in the University after the 20th century
Jeffrey Keuss, Seattle Pacific University, USA
9. 'Thrashing between Exoneration and Excoriation: Creating Narratives in We Need to Talk about Kevin
Zoë Lehmann Imfeld, University of Bern, Switzerland
10. The Shakespeare Music: Eliot and von Balthasar on Shakespeare's 'romances' and the 'ultra-dramatic'
Aaron Riches, Instituto de Teología Lumen Gentium, Instituto de Filosofía Edith Stein, Spain
11. Fictioning Things: Gift and Narrative
John Milbank, University of Nottingham, UK
12. Language, Reality and Desire in Augustine's De Doctrina
Rowan Williams, Magdalene College, University of Cambridge, UK
Index
Product details
Published | 12 Mar 2015 |
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Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
Edition | 1st |
Extent | 304 |
ISBN | 9780567654953 |
Imprint | T&T Clark |
Series | Religion and the University |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors
Reviews
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Of the contributions to this volume John Milton might well have exclaimed, "O how comely it is, and how reviving to the spirits of just men long oppressed" by the "disciplinary division and animosity in the modern university between Literature and Theology" ... For here is a book advocating a revolutionary breach of the old established boundaries between the two above-mentioned disciplines in favour of a theological approach to literature and a literary approach to theology.
Peter Milward, Sophia University, Tokyo, Heythrop Journal
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This fine collection features some of the liveliest minds at work in Anglophone literary and theological study. They avoid the postmodernist denial of any transcendent basis for such binaries as belief and unbelief, time and eternity, comedy and tragedy. Instead, they unite such contraries within a complex and difficult tension that identifies both the absence and presence of God in a secular age such as ours. They do so by fresh readings of figures which range from Augustine and Gregory the Great to Dante and Nicholas of Cusa, from Shakespeare and Wordsworth to Graham Greene and R. S. Thomas, on to Philip Pullman and J. K. Rowling. Here is a veritable feast for body and soul, mind and heart alike.
Ralph C. Wood, Baylor University, USA
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Theology and Literature after Postmodernity brings us an intelligently provocative set of essays. To read them all is to have one's sense of the possible interactions of theology and literature greatly expanded. The essays provide many insightful, even brilliant, readings of texts, but their greater contribution is to lay paths for future scholarship, for those who have the courage and resourcefulness to follow
Alan Jacobs, Wheaton College, USA
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The aim of this volume, the editors make clear, is to create a 'hospitable' space where theological and literary texts, and those who read, write and discuss them, can converse creatively and openly. 'Hospitality' implies food offered to a guest. We receive a banquet here: a rich variety of remarkably thought-provoking essays, with something for every taste. It is one of those 'all-you-can-eat' banquets, as each 'dish' (or chapter) invites and repays multiple 'tastings'. Hospitality also creates an abiding debt of gratitude to the host; and certainly, I closed this book conscious, not only of a sense of fullness and well-being, but of a debt to all who 'hosted' me as I read their works.
Gregory Seach, University of Cambridge, UK
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Reveals the need for an ongoing interdisciplinary exploration of literature and theology. This collection shows that there is not one, single way to approach literature and theology; the collection's wide approach is thus, a major strength of the work. I recommend Theology and Literature After Postmodernity to theologians, literary critics, and anyone interested in imagining 'a welcoming space of future possibilities reclaimed by theology and literature' (10).
Reading Religion

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