ABSTRACT

This unique and comprehensive volume looks at the study of literature and religion from a contemporary critical perspective. Including discussion of global literature and world religions, this Companion looks at:

  • Key moments in the story of religion and literary studies from Matthew Arnold through to the impact of 9/11
  • A variety of theoretical approaches to the study of religion and literature
  • Different ways that religion and literature are connected from overtly religious writing, to subtle religious readings
  • Analysis of key sacred texts and the way they have been studied, re-written, and questioned by literature
  • Political implications of work on religion and literature

Thoroughly introduced and contextualised, this volume is an engaging introduction to this huge and complex field.

chapter |11 pages

Introduction

Literature, Religion, and the Art of Conversation

part |76 pages

The Modern Story of Literature and Religion

chapter |12 pages

The Inward Turn

The Role of Matthew Arnold

chapter |10 pages

Modernism and Religion

chapter |11 pages

Modern Debates

Christianity and Literature, Literature and Theology, and Religion and Literature

chapter |9 pages

The Return of Religion

Secularization and its Discontents

part |78 pages

Theory

chapter |11 pages

Postsecular Studies

chapter |11 pages

Reception 1

chapter |11 pages

Political Theology

chapter |11 pages

Phenomenology

chapter |10 pages

Paul Among the Theorists

A Genealogy of the New Universalism

chapter |11 pages

The Aesthetics of Simplicity

part |107 pages

Form and Genre

chapter |10 pages

Theological Writing

How to Write a Theological Sentence

chapter |23 pages

Rue Saint-Augustin

The Remembering of God

chapter |11 pages

Epic

chapter |14 pages

Religion and Literary Tragedy

King Lear and the Problem of Evil

chapter |10 pages

Wes Anderson's Messianic Elegies

chapter |15 pages

Comedy, Levity, and Laughter

Parables of Agape

part |90 pages

The Literary Afterlives of Sacred Texts and Traditions

chapter |12 pages

Hosting the Divine Logos

Radical Hospitality and Dostoevsky's Crime and

chapter |9 pages

“Found in Every Room”

Victorian Devotional Literature

chapter |10 pages

The “Problem” of Buddhism for Western Literature

Edwin Arnold to Jack Kerouac

chapter |11 pages

The Challenges of Re-Writing Sacred Texts

The Case of Twenty-First Century Gospel Narratives

chapter |11 pages

Apocalyptic Narration

The Qur'an in Contemporary Arabic Fiction 1

part |92 pages

The Politics of Literature and Religion

chapter |11 pages

“Oh Lett that Last will Stand”

Reading Religion in Donne's Holy Sonnets

chapter |10 pages

The Life of a Christian Saint

The Biography of Fannie McCray, Born and Raised a Slave

chapter |10 pages

From Roshi to Rashi

Leonard Cohen's Interfaith Dialogue

chapter |14 pages

Reconciliation in South Africa

World Literature, Global Christianity, Global Capital 1

chapter |11 pages

Imagining Islamism

Representations of Fundamentalism in the Twenty-First Century Arabic Novel 1