1st Edition
Literature and Theology New Interdisciplinary Spaces
This book explores current trends in the interdisciplinary study of literature and theology - an area of academic activity that has developed dramatically in the past twenty years. The field of study originated from the impetus to embrace the richness of imaginative resources in theological reflection and was stimulated by the re-emergence of the sacred in contemporary theory. Since the mid '90s critical theory has undergone a number of significant transformations, theology has become a subject of public concern and the boundaries between sacred and cultural texts have become increasingly unstable. This book brings together the work of leading scholars in the field with that of emerging voices. Offering an important resource for the growing number of postgraduate courses exploring the relation between religion and culture in the contemporary context, this book delineates current trends in interdisciplinary debate as well as tracing emerging configurations.
Biography
Dr Heather Walton, Head of Department Theology and Religious Studies, Director of the Centre for Literature, Theology and the Arts, University of Glasgow
'Some imagined we would now be living in a post-disciplinary age. But the disciplines still persist; those traditions of question and purposed wonder that let us see the world with eyes both learned and quizzical. And there are still those who work at the edges of such terrains, who wander, though determinedly, in the lands between, in places that are at once familiar and disconcertingly different. This fine collection of essays reports on the detours and delights of travelling betwixt theology and literature, those forms of writing that variously witness to and invent the human and its changing conditions. Written by some of the most acute and dogged of travellers, these essays discover again the strangeness of our interdependency on one another and on the differently other that sometimes our relationships bespeak.' Gerard Loughlin, Durham University, UK 'Literature and Theology challenges the multidisciplinary tourism that so often passes for interdisciplinary scholarship (35)... [a] welcome read...' Journal of Religion 'The volume is a genuine attempt to define the current study of literature and theology and suggest ways to move it forward into further interdisciplinary spaces.' Modern Believing 'Chou and Van Andel, through analysis of C.S. Lewis and Coleridge, respectively, demonstrate how irony and symbol are foundational to both literature and theology. These essays are highly recommended for the serious student and scholar in the field of theology and literature.' Religious Studies Review 'One can only be grateful for a volume like this that engages scholars across the generations in this developing field by marking ’spaces’ where conversation about an commitment to such flourishing might transpire.' Worship
