Literature and Theology - recent issues

Exegesis of the End: Limitations of Lollard Apocalypticism as Revealed in a Commentary on Matthew 24

Lewis, A. — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:09:37 PST

Lollard writing is characterised by a preoccupation with the end times, but the kind of eschatological mindset the texts reflect has become a matter of some debate. This article seeks to shed some light on this issue through an analysis of the text Of Mynystris in the Chirche, a commentary on Matthew 24 and one of the longest Lollard discussions of the Bible's eschatological prophecies. Specifically, this article points to a correspondence between a tension at the heart of Lollard attitudes to the theory and practice of scriptural exegesis and a tension at the heart of Lollard perspectives on end times events. It therefore demonstrates how this text reveals the way in which Lollard hermeneutics helped to determine the limits of Lollard apocalypticism.

Macbeth's Banquo: Faux Ami as Christian Friend

Fendt, G. — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:09:37 PST

One sign of Banquo's nature and authorial intent regarding Macbeth is what we might call Banquo's grammar. In grammar, a faux ami is a word in a foreign language that looks like a word in one's own, but means something quite different. Banquo is the ghost of such a word. In Latin, he would be declined banquo, banques, banquet; but the word does not exist in Latin. So ‘Banquo’ is the ghost of a faux ami; his being and ghost a double edged grammatical pun. His appearance and action at Macbeth's banquets (where Macbeth performs ‘non banquo’) exhibit that he is, moreover, the truest friend.

Holderlin's Atheisms

Whistler, D. — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:09:37 PST

This essay initiates an interrogation of Friedrich Hölderlin’s ‘last’ (post-1806) poetry from the point of view of his pre-1806 works. It argues that, while the theological underpinnings of this earlier writing are systematically rejected in Hölderlin’s ‘last’ writings, this does not necessarily mean that there is no connection whatsoever between the two. On the contrary, I give three readings of the ‘last’ poetry which attempt progressively to pinpoint its theological significance.

The Genesis of Eden: Scriptural (Re) Translations and the (Un) Making of an Academic Eden in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

May, C. — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:09:37 PST

In Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison's central protagonist likens the Southern historically black college he attends to Eden. Such a comparison launches my discussion of how Ellison's academic Eden departs from, corresponds with and/or (re)envisions its scriptural counterpart. All in all, Invisible Man provides a platform from which to question whether a version of Eden within the realm of higher education can offer an escape from racism or avoid racialised ideologies. How appropriating this region in its primeval, pre and post ‘Fall’ state is tied to utopianesque depictions of American democracy drives Ellison's tussle with the (re)imagination of America as a raceless Eden even as race dominates its history and economic/political profile. To this end, Ellison's (un)making of Eden critiques those who align this biblical place with historical accounts that describe the origins of America as a nation birthed from a pristine history. As far as Ellison is concerned, the allure of America as an Eden-like promised land is dependent on the notion that its historical evolution is unaffected by racism and uninformed by race. Taking issue with this position, Ellison dissects the fallacy of this viewpoint in his writings. Altogether, this essay engages Ellison's penchant for wrestling with complex and seemingly un-resolvable concepts in his works. Probing the alluring yet somewhat perplexing paradoxes underlying Eden shapes this analysis of Invisible Man.

God's Invisible Traces: The Sacred in Fallen Language, Translation and Literariness

Loevlie, E. M. — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:09:38 PST

The story of the Fall inscribes the myth of a fallen language as the absolute other of the original sacred. Hence the dualistic scheme between a fallen materiality and a metaphysical God. This article explores how the death of this God is not merely a secular turn, but the opening of a different, anti-theological, or fallen religiosity that allows us to trace the sacred in unexpected places—also within fallen language. Translation and literature will be explored as instances where language performs its own fallenness—its materiality, arbitrariness and difference—and thereby releases a sacred expression. The essay considers 17th-century theologian Martin de Barcos’ letters regarding translation, Derrida's essay ‘Des Tours de Babel’ and notions of literariness based on Blanchot and Mallarmé.

Sacramental Poetics at the Dawn of Secularism: When God Left the World. By Regina Mara Schwartz.

Smith, M. J. — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:09:38 PST

Dissent Over Descent: Intelligent Design's Challenge to Darwinism. By Steve Fuller.

McCall, B. — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:09:38 PST

Theological Aesthetics After Von Balthasar. Edited by Oleg V. Bychkov and James Fodor.

Taylor, T. K. — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:09:38 PST

Conversations with American Writers: The Doubt, the Faith, the In-Between. By Dale Brown.

Hamner, E. — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:09:38 PST

Melville's Bibles. By Ilana Pardes.

Johnson, B. A. — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:09:38 PST

Milton's Vision: The Birth of Christian Liberty. By Theo Hobson. The Development of Milton's Thought: Law, Government, and Religion. By John T. Shawcross.

Crome, A. — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:09:38 PST

The New Testament as Literature: Very Short Introduction. By Kyle Keefer.

Jasper, D. — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:09:38 PST

Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy. The Making of GKC 1874-1908. By William Oddie.

Murdoch, B. — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:09:38 PST

Reading Everyman. By Leo Carruthers.

Murdoch, B. — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:09:38 PST

Frauenlob's Song of Songs: A Medieval Poet and His Masterpiece. By Barbara Newman.

Pfeiffer, K. — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:09:38 PST

William Blake's Poetry. By Jonathan Roberts.

Burdon, C. — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:09:38 PST

Notices and Reports

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:09:38 PST

Introduction

Nielsen, K. — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:40:29 PDT

Challenging Texts--Reception and Transformation of Biblical Texts in Popular Science

Nielsen, M. V. — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:40:29 PDT

The reception of biblical texts within works on science by evolutionary biologists has not received much attention previously. It is, however, an interesting aspect of the reception of biblical texts in public culture today. An analysis of some of the texts provided by evolutionary biologists involved in communicating science to the general public reveals a confrontational engagement with biblical texts, such as the Book of Job and Genesis 1 and 2. This article will present examples of the biblical reception in the work of E. O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins within a context of the general reception of literature in their work, with an emphasis on how the involvement with biblical material points to the negative normativity of these texts. The article will furthermore discuss the reasons behind this involvement, especially in relation to the proposal by some evolutionary biologists to replace religious narratives with narratives based in science. This final theme points to how biblical texts seem to represent a norm, which some evolutionary biologists deem it necessary to break and replace through the reformulation of new narratives about what it means to be human.

Postcolonial Science Fiction?: Science, Religion and the Transformation of Genre in Amitav Ghosh's The Calcutta Chromosome

Thrall, J. H. — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:40:29 PDT

An example of the emerging subgenre of postcolonial science fiction, Amitav Ghosh's 1995 novel The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium and Discovery disrupts colonialism's sharp opposition between suspect Eastern esotericism and the normative force of Western rationality by presenting an inherently rational and mystical order. In keeping with the unsettling irruption of other postcolonial voices in a genre so identified with Western technological hegemony, the novel's complex mingling of religion and science raises questions about the nature of knowledge, while it suggests the need to reconsider the boundaries of science fiction yet again.

The Post-Secular Poetics and Ethics of Exposure in J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace

Faber, A. — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:40:29 PDT

J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace is a post-secular novel that envisions new terms for ethics in post-apartheid South Africa by both engaging and resisting religious language and practice. These new terms for ethics are intimated through the confessional practice of the main character, David Lurie, and the dialogical narrative structure of the novel. Exploring further themes that he introduced in a 1985 essay on confession, Coetzee complicates willing, ethical agency and self-initiated transformation, in and through Lurie's resistance to vulnerability undone in slight and important ways through the urgent address of others, both animal and human.

The Art of Per Kirkeby in Relation to Important Aspects of Orthodox Theology of Images

Frederiksen, H. J. — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:40:29 PDT

One of Denmark's most important contemporary artists, Per Kirkeby (b.1938), shows in his paintings, sculptures and writings an extraordinary artistic, philosophical and historical awareness of the conditions on which images function. Many of his most interesting subjects, principles and experiences resonate with (art-) historical themes and issues, for instance the Byzantine iconoclastic dispute in the 8th and 9th centuries, ‘in principle a discussion that must continue every day’. This article demonstrates some of these conditions and thereby exemplifies how present-day art can deal with a religious subject without ignoring the obvious modern difficulties involved.

Deathly Passion: Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses and the Transgressive Character of Sexuality and Religion

Knauss, S. — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:40:29 PDT

Oshima's film In the Realm of the Senses is an early example of what today is called ‘artcore’: films that employ the transgressivity of the representation of sexuality in order to discuss its meaning for human existence. This transgressiveness is intensified by the connection between sex and death that the film establishes. This article understands transgressivity as a positive value, arguing that the analogy between sexual and religious experiences is reinforced by the film's uncovering of the irresolvable ambivalence of sexuality. The analysis of the representation of a transgressive sexual relationship upon the background of Georges Bataille's reflections on sex, death and the sacred, shows how the film achieves a broader perspective on the meaning and role of sexuality in human life, and how precisely in sexuality's transgressiveness and ambivalence the sacred is evoked.

Crucifixion in the Concert Hall: Secular and Sacred in James Macmillan's Passion of St John

Pyper, H. S. — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:40:29 PDT

James MacMillan's Passion of St John is a prime exemplar of the issues that can arise when a sacred text is presented in a secular space. MacMillan takes not only the text of the Gospel but the liturgical experience of the Good Friday liturgy into the concert hall. This raises the question of how the audience is expected to react to the performance. A particular problem arises from the inclusion of the Improperia, or Reproaches, a text which has been a point of controversy between Jewish and Christian interpreters and which makes direct demands upon its audience and their response. The argument of this paper is that MacMillan's setting characteristically intensifies the challenge and presents the choice between belief and unbelief as a choice between an ethical and an aesthetic reaction to the Christian story. This is a common but misleading polarisation accepted by both secular and religious critics. Each group present their own attitude to the text as morally superior to that of their opponents. Kierkegaard's view that the religious is to be distinguished from both the ethical and the aesthetic, and that the key moment is that of humour, may offer another model for dialogue between the secular and the religious in public discourse.

Empire and Apocalypse: Postcolonialism and the New Testament. By Stephen D. Moore.

Filipczak, D. — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:40:29 PDT

Iris Murdoch and the Art of Imagining. By Marije Altorf.

Jasper, D. — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:40:29 PDT

Catholic Theology in Shakespeare's Plays. By David N. Beauregard.

Hillier, R. M. — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:40:29 PDT

Into the Dark: Seeing the Sacred in the Top Films of the 21st Century. By Craig Detweiler.

Vollmer, U. — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:40:29 PDT

Charles Williams Alchemy and Integration. By Gavin Ashenden.

Roberts, R. H. — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:40:29 PDT

Reading Spiritualities: Constructing and Representing the Sacred. Edited by Dawn Llewellyn and Deborah F. Sawyer.

Fisk, A. — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:40:29 PDT

Catholic Nostalgia in Joyce and Company. By Mary Lowe-Evans.

O'Connor, J. D. — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:40:29 PDT

Notices and Reports

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:40:30 PDT

The Augustinian Soliloquies of an Early Modern Reader: A Stylistic Relation of Shakespeare's Hamlet?

Staykova, J. D. — Sun, 24 May 2009 21:56:23 PDT

Augustine's Soliloquia, an early dialogue composed in 386–387 A.D., is a significant precursor of Augustine's interior turn and the dramatised account of his mental life in the Confessions. The present essay suggests that the reception of the Augustinian soliloquy in early modern England was mediated by a compilation that bore the title St. Augustine's Soliloquies but was not written by Augustine. Published under variant titles advertising the devotional practices of its three principal pieces, Meditationes Sancti Augustini, Soliloquiorum animae ad deum, and Manuale de aspiratione hominis ad Deum, the compilation was widely known on the continent and had an energetic reception in England, going through twenty-seven translated editions in the 1550s–1640s alone. In light of the publishing history of the pseudo-Augustinian apocrypha, the essay investigates evidence of the currency of soliloquy in early modern usage, and suggests that the soliloquies in Tudor and early Stuart devotional practice originate in the apocryphal Meditations, Soliloquies and Manual. Finally, after comparing a passage from the apocryphal compilation with Hamlet's soliloquy in I.ii.129–137, the essay argues that early modern devotional soliloquies display significant stylistic similarities to the dramatic soliloquies of the age.

Dutch Religious Love Emblems: Reflections of Faith and Toleration in the Later 17th Century

Stronks, E. — Sun, 24 May 2009 21:56:23 PDT

In this article, I examine the process of appropriation demonstrated in early modern Dutch religious love emblems published in the Dutch Republic around 1700. These religious love emblems were adaptations of Roman Catholic emblem books, originally made by Jesuits or priests in the Southern Netherlands around 1630. The reconstruction of the network formed by these religious emblems in the Republic, and an analysis of the gaps between the originals and their adaptations, allow us to take a closer look at changing attitudes towards religious faith and religious toleration at the time.

Ambivalent Imperialism: The Missionary Rhetoric of Robert Boyd

Livingstone, J. — Sun, 24 May 2009 21:56:23 PDT

Postcolonial Studies has directed much of its critique of British Imperialism at those informal agents responsible for the cultural crimes of colonial exploitation. Missionaries have routinely been charged with cultural annihilation and for conjuring up images of different and distant peoples and places. In keeping with a growing trend in historical studies, this article revisits the complexity of missionary involvement in colonialism, and its rhetorical construction of otherness. But I do this in quite a different way by examining as literature writings produced by missionaries themselves. Specifically, I analyse the works of Robert Boyd, a missionary in India in the early 20th century and later convener of Foreign Mission for the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. By bringing the tools of rhetorical analysis to bear upon such ‘non-literary’ texts, I hope to intervene in a debate dominated by historians and theologians. I argue that the relationship between mission and imperialism is one of ambivalence, an ever complex dynamic, which refuses the cliché of the bible and the gun as the dual tools of empire.

'Equanimity': Les Murray, Levinas and the Breath of God

Cooper, I. — Sun, 24 May 2009 21:56:23 PDT

This article provides a close reading of Les Murray's poem ‘Equanimity’ in the context of Emmanuel Lévinas’ ethical thought. It argues that Murray's poem can be located in relation to Paul Celan's concept of the ‘turn of breath’, a hermeneutics of voice and address that points to Lévinas' understanding of the face of the other. ‘Equanimity’ both works out a conception of encounter with the other that has strong parallels in Lévinas (particularly concerning the themes of speaking and seeing), and seeks to move beyond an ethics based in difference by incorporating speech and vision into a theology of grace.

A Deleuzian Analysis of Thomas Altizer's Style

Carlsson, P. — Sun, 24 May 2009 21:56:23 PDT

This article offers a new entrance into the radical theology of Thomas J. J. Altizer and suggests a contemporary relevance of his theology that might not yet be fully acknowledged. By relating Altizer's theology to the French thinker Gilles Deleuze's notions of repetition and the actual/virtual the article suggests a subversive force in precisely those stylistic characteristics of Altizer's prose that have been critiqued for indicating an incomplete break with modernist thought.

Emplotting Forgiveness: Narrative, Forgetting and Memory

Tran, J. — Sun, 24 May 2009 21:56:23 PDT

Miroslav Volf has provocatively argued that redemption necessitates forgetting (1996, 2006). Yet, Volf's claims insufficiently consider the narratival configuration of memory. This essay utilises Paul Ricoeur's work on mimesis in order to challenge Volf's case for forgetting. The author advances Ricoeur's philosophical description of forgiveness toward a theological account of divine forgiveness as re-narration, gift-giving funded by trinitarian abundance.

In Memoriam Robert Detweiler (1932-2008)

Jasper, D. — Sun, 24 May 2009 21:56:23 PDT

Gregory of Nyssa, Ancient and (Post)modern. By Morwenna Ludlow. * Clement of Alexandria: A Project of Christian Perfection. By Piotr Ashwin-Siejkowski.

Jasper, D. — Sun, 24 May 2009 21:56:23 PDT

Religion without Belief: Contemporary Allegory and the Search for Postmodern Faith. By Jean Ellen Petrolle.

Ruf, F. J. — Sun, 24 May 2009 21:56:23 PDT

Reframing Theology and Film. New Focus for an Emerging Discipline. Edited by Robert K. Johnston.

Birzache, A. — Sun, 24 May 2009 21:56:23 PDT

Earth and World Classic Sermons on Saving the Planet. Edited by David Rhoads.

Smith, A. — Sun, 24 May 2009 21:56:23 PDT

Douglas Coupland. By Andrew Tate.

Stewart, F. — Sun, 24 May 2009 21:56:23 PDT

Terry Eagleton: A Critical Introduction. By James Smith.

Taylor, T. K. — Sun, 24 May 2009 21:56:23 PDT

Karl Barth and Hans Urs Von Balthasar: A Critical Engagement. By Stephen D. Wigley.

Taylor, T. K. — Sun, 24 May 2009 21:56:23 PDT

The Religion and Film Reader. Edited by Jolyon Mitchell and S. Brent Plate.

Murphy, D. — Sun, 24 May 2009 21:56:23 PDT

What Would Jesus Deconstruct?: The Good News of Postmodernity for the Church. By John D. Caputo.

Rivera, J. M. — Sun, 24 May 2009 21:56:23 PDT

The Death of God: An Investigation into the History of the Western Concept of God. By Frederiek Depoortere.

Martinson, M. — Sun, 24 May 2009 21:56:23 PDT

Perspectives on the Passion: Encountering the Bible Through the Arts. Edited by Christine E. Joynes.

Orr, D. M. — Sun, 24 May 2009 21:56:23 PDT

Notices and Reports

Sun, 24 May 2009 21:56:23 PDT