1st Edition

Poetics of Critique The Interdisciplinarity of Textuality

By Andrew W. Hass Copyright 2003
    196 Pages
    by Routledge

    196 Pages
    by Routledge

    Title first published in 2003. Poetics of Critique breaks new ground in its pursuit of a formal and critical language of interdisciplinarity. The "founding" disciplines within the humanities - theology, philosophy, and literature - are brought together here in a shared space, but one that reconstitutes the very nature of each and any discipline. Readings alternate between discursive analysis and imaginative revisioning; texts alternate between those of the critical thinker (Kant, Nietzsche, Gadamer) and those of the novelist, the poet, and the playwright (Bulgakov, Goethe, Kundera, Sophocles). In this movement between traditions, a fusion, at once organic and dynamic, takes place: theologian, philosopher and artist become one, and a pure interdisciplinarity begins to emerge into view. Andrew Hass draws us into a new critical-poetic sensibility, by which we may explore the ultimate questions of human existence and divine reality with new vigor and sustain, or indeed revitalize, our deep passion for the fundamental question of truth.

    Contents: Foreword; A beginning: John; Bulgakov; Kant; Goethe; Interlude: Nietzsche; Kundera; Gadamer; Sophocles; Index.

    Biography

    Andrew Hass is Lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies, University of Stirling, UK. He was formerly Visiting Assistant Professor in Religion and Literature and the Jesse H. and Mary Gibbs Jones Fellow in The Honors College of the University of Houston, USA. He has published on the intersection of religion, philosophy, and literature, and is US editor of the international journal Literature and Theology.

    'Hass's writings are endlessly hospitable, welcoming all, listening to all, critiquing all. I believe this book is that rare thing in the literature of the academy, a genuinely original contribution to thought. It takes the study of literature and theology on to a new level, beyond its present borders. It thrives within the great traditions of the history of ideas and literature of all ages, and it welcomes each one of us afresh into the precarious processes of thinking so that we may ask with renewed confidence and resources the ancient question, what indeed is truth?' David Jasper, University of Glasgow (from the Foreword of Poetics of Critique) '... a paradigmatic interdisciplinary text written with a high level of scholarly rigor... Hass's writing is one example, and a fine example, of doing interdisciplinarity, of allowing perpetual critique to lead us to the margins. Poetics of Critique is a genuinely exciting effort to dwell within the dark space of interdisciplinarity - an uncertain, insecure space where the rules are uncertain and guiding lights flicker dimly but are not overcome.' Reviews in Religion and Theology