ABSTRACT
To see courses in “Religion and Literature” as part of an on-going academic project, they should be placed in their historical and cultural context. This chapter, although briefly, describes the origins, emergence, tensions, and present state of “Religion and Literature” as an academic field or interest. This historical/cultural context has four stages. The first, starting in the early nineteenth century, was marked by a cultural assumption that literature and religion could readily be related to one another because of their shared characteristics and cultural roles. A second stage appears in the early twentieth century when literary and religious interests were pursued in independence both from one another and from the surrounding culture. The third stage saw attempts by literary artists and theorists and by religious thinkers and theologians to identify, restore, or construct relations between the two. The fourth stage was shaped by so-called deconstruction, primarily the critical suspicion that both literature and religion depend for their identity and cultural roles on an idealism that should be challenged by a materialist, especially political, critique. The essay ends with an appraisal of the postmodern context in which both literary and religious studies are now situated. Fluidity and uncertainty, while presenting new challenges for each, also create opportunities. Due to increased interdisciplinary studies in the humanities, mutually revealing characteristics and roles of both can be clarified and their potentials as allies in offering alternatives to the growing dominance in the academy and the general culture of theoretical and practical materialism can be advanced.
