Literature and Theology Research Papers (original) (raw)

recensione per Archivio Teologico Torinese 2/2016

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- Literature and Theology, Theology and Literature, Bible and narratology, Teologia narrativa
- by Peter Groves
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- Literature and Theology, Elizabethan Literature, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene

In my paper, I am discussing Decameron, one of the most important literary works of the 14th century, also known as The Human Comedy. The devastating pandemic of the Black Death of the Middle Ages produced the highest number of lethal cases of all time across Europe. The atmosphere of this crisis in the middle of the century pervades the frame narrative of Boccaccio’s 100 and a half short stories and the novellas themselves. True to the contemporary worldview, Boccaccio's narrative uses the theological interpretation which, starting out from the prophecies of the Book of Revelation of the Bible about the end of the world, received the pandemic as God’s rightful punishment. According to this, people’s sin is properly punished by the blows of natural catastrophes and invisible illnesses. We may go even further if we profoundly consider the intertextual relationship between the Christian prophecy of warning signals before the Last Judgment with the text of Decameron. The theological content of the apocalypse is much more than the narrative of punishment for sins or of doom. As an author familiar with scholastic theology, Boccaccio may also have known this when he created a mostly ironic, but at times merely mimetic relationship between the theological reference of the apocalypse and the historical reference of the pandemic in the motivic and linguistic allusions of his own masterpiece. Close reading not only the frame narrative, but also the grotesque representations of the motifs of the garden, death, and the triple branching of life after death (Hell, Purgatory or Heaven), I am looking for the answer to the question in what sense can we exactly consider Decameron as an apocalyptic reading of the pandemic.

Niniejsza praca ma na celu przedstawienie teorii mitotwórczej J. R. R. Tolkiena, z perspektywy jej wymiaru duchowego. Od czasów antycznych teorie, tudzież filozofie, opierały się na myśleniu abstrakcyjnym i miały za zadanie wyjaśnienie ówczesnemu człowiekowi otaczającej go rzeczywistości. Nie inaczej było z Tolkienowską teorią, na potrzebę której ukuł swój termin Mitopoeia. „Duchowy wymiar Tolkienowskiej Teorii Mitotwórczej” – tłumacząc tytuł tej pracy na język Polski – przekłada się na wiele sfer życia Tolkiena. Pierwsza z tych płaszczyzn, to przypisywany mu przez niektórych krytyków program filozoficzny. Na tym wymiarze skupia się pierwszy rozdział tej pracy: „The Philosophical Disenchantment.” Jednak jak sugeruje tytuł, stanowi on zaledwie tło wszelkich dalszych poszukiwań, gdyż oferuje badaczom Tolkienowskiej myśli jedynie jej racjonalizację i demitologizację. Życiowa pasja Tolkiena, filologia komparatywna, daje wystarczające zrozumienie jego fenomenu, a przynajmniej zdaniem kilku krytyków. Niezaprzeczalnie stanowiła ona inspirację, a zarazem była narzędziem, którego Tolkien użył podług swej ogromnej wiedzy z zakresu językoznawstwa. Pomimo, iż w tej pracy „Comparative Philology” jest omawiana w drugiej kolejności, to właśnie ta dyscyplina była źródłem znajomości filozofii u Tolkiena. Podążając krokami Tolkieniany nie można jednak na tym poprzestać. Trzeci wymiar, jakże metafizyczny i filozoficzny w swych założeniach i implikacjach to odkrycie Owena Barfielda, znajomego Tolkiena. Barfield odkrył Teorię „Jedności Semantycznej,” co Tolkienowi przyszło łatwo przyjąć do wiadomości: język jako narzędzie może również być transcendentny, ze względu na swe początki. Dla Tolkiena była to jedna z tych rzeczy, która pozwoliła mu uwierzyć w smoki. „Philological Philosophy: Let There Be Dragons” – jest zatem łącznikiem między dwoma światami. Jednakże Tolkien nie był byle fantastą, oderwanym od ziemi. Teoria Barfielda, obudziła w nim nadzieję. Pomimo to, tak jak każdy rozsądny i racjonalny człowiek Tolkien musiał dowiedzieć się, „czy to prawda.” Potrzebował czegoś, aby idee odnieść do nie tyle rzeczywistego doświadczenia, ile prawdy. Prawda, bowiem wyzwala. Mimo nieustannego negowania jego wiary, to właśnie ona umożliwiła mu dalsze rozważanie tych teorii. I nie da się inaczej wytłumaczyć jego mitotwórstwa, jak przez uznanie jego wiary. Miłości do Boga, która była tak głęboka, że aż sięgała wiedzy teologicznej. Tego, między innymi, tyczy ostatni rozdział tej pracy: „Myth Becomes Truth.”
Liczba stron: 51

- by Michael Matusiak
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- Creative Writing, Critical Theory, British Literature, Mythology And Folklore
- by David Parry
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- English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval English Literature, Science Fiction

This paper investigates one of those key decision points in post-war German society, which has only been superficially explored until now. The changing concept of God in the Trümmerliteratur of Germany’s post-war literary revival led the way for a re-examination by many Germans of their religious beliefs and whether it was even worthwhile to give the possible existence of a God a second thought. They reconsidered whether a faith in a “Märchenbuchliebergott” as coined by Wolfgang Borchert, was still a tenable model for post-war German society. Central to the paper are the literary works of Borchert, who, with a slim published oeuvre, investigates the many different facets of God through his wartime experiences and the consequences he faced upon his return home. This paper demonstrates that Borchert comes to the conclusion that the concept of God gives humans a convenient excuse for their brutality, while the real God is ineffable and can only be found in the act of searching; a deistic vision of God that rejects the revelations of religion and theology. These discussions have lain dormant since the early 1950s, as Germany’s Wirtschaftswunder emerged from the rubble. However, in recent years, Germans born after the war have begun to re-evaluate the literature of the period and in
particular that of Borchert as a necessary balm that allowed them to heal from the trauma of the war.

- by Erwin Warkentin
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- German Literature, Literature and Theology, Germany, Postwar Germany
- by David Parry
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- British Literature, English Literature, Rhetoric, Augustine

The “sacramental imagination” is closely associated with writers from the Roman Catholic tradition. However, Marilynne Robinson, drawing on the creational and sacramental theology of John Calvin, has successfully developed a distinctly American Protestant sacramental vision in and through her novels Housekeeping and Gilead. In this article, I examine Robinson’s appropriation of Calvin to show how he has shaped her sacramental view of the world. I then look at the two novels in succession to show how this vision manifests itself in her fiction. Robinson sees creation itself as bearing a sacramental character that is particularly evident in the elements of water, bread, and wine. When these elements are concentrated in sacramental actions and viewed through the corrective lens of Scripture, they reveal this intention with an even greater clarity. Through her depictions of the sacred nature of ordinary people and places, Robinson articulates a vision that invites the reader to see the divine in the common.

- by Andrew C Stout
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- Literature and Theology, Sacramental Theology

In this paper, I examine some important themes in Ayn Rand's Anthem, pertaining to the significance of ‘I’, individual happiness and the conception of ‘we’. In the second section of the paper, I raise a question if the individual freedom suggested by Rand is the best possible kind. As a response to the question, I propose a reading of Martin Luther King Jr.’s letter from Birmingham Jail, in which the values that are compatible and incompatible with Rand’s can be both explored. By examining the limitations and the contradictions between their ideas, particularly on individual freedom and the meaning of the self in relation to others, I suggest an alternative conception of ‘we’ as a shared challenge and a vision of humanity in the final part.

- by Esther Ahn
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- South Korea, David Foster Wallace, Literature and Theology, Freedom
- by Alex Villas Boas and +1
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- Literature and Theology, Teologia e Literatura

Friendship is a powerful force in human society and its absence can provoke the conditions of spiritual death. In her response to a post-Enlightenment context that valued an excessive form of individual autonomy, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley wrote Frankenstein (1818) and used the imagery of Satan to describe the shattered friendship of Frankenstein and his monster. Spiritual death is a contested category and for some readers, the word “Satan” also carries cultural connotations that can be distracting. Lawrence S. Cunningham composed a theological meditation on Satan to clarify the core characteristics of evil, pointing to Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy (1320) and John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) as paradigmatic examples of this imagery. For him, Milton’s Satan represents the pursuit of autonomy at all costs and Dante’s Satan embodies the end results of that choice. Cunningham shows that these characteristics are complementary of one another, but in Frankenstein, they are even more intelligible as narrative elements with a coherent message. In this article, the author argues that Shelley used the imagery of Satan to critique the aridness of rationalism when its account of individual autonomy excludes the formation of friendship. This theological meditation on Frankenstein will begin by describing Shelley’s Romantic context and her approach to spiritual death. Then, it will engage with Miltonian and Danteque imagery in two separate parts, reflecting on how she applied them to the spiritual atmosphere of Frankenstein. Shelley articulated the form of spiritual death that was characteristic of modernity and warned against the kind of frozen isolation that results from the inward turn, the egoistic choice of self. The insights offered through this theological meditation provide readers with a guide to the excesses of individual autonomy and by way of negation, show the value of friendship in a world that has forgotten the imagination.

- by Trevor B Williams
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- John Milton, Friendship, Literature and Theology, Dante Alighieri
- by Jennifer Reek
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- Poetry, Poetics, Martin Heidegger, Karl Rahner

The article first briefly shows how Hilary Mantel's A Change of Climate (1994) and Sara Maitland's Home Truths (1993), both ‘secular’ novels , display Christian imagery from their epigraphs to their very structure. What is more, the topic in itself raises the much-debated question of theodicy. Faced with the traumatic death of a family member, the main protagonists – who were brought up Christians – are forced to revise their conceptions of God on their return home after the tragedy. Where is the ordered and safe God of their childhood in the face of suffering and the difficulties of life? Using the work of the literary scholars Laurie Vickroy and Cathy Caruth, the analysis demonstrates how trauma shatters the main characters’ inherited and largely unquestioned Christian beliefs. The question quickly appears to be not only who God is, but also where He is. Due to their religious upbringing, the protagonists mainly associate God to what they consider their home place. Relying upon Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, I will therefore consider the role home plays in the construal of the Godhead. It is mainly in the intimacy and safety of the home that the characters are able to confront their suffering and difficult past, and to reassess their former beliefs in God. The conspicuous contrast between their understanding of God at home and what they have experienced abroad iis also explored as it enlightens their renewed vision of the Christian divinity. In this paper, I thus examine and compare the way the diegesis as well as the interconnection between beliefs and geographical places are used by the two novelists to convey a sense of God, thereby showing how similar devices may bring different images of the Godhead.

- by Marie Holdsworth
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- English Literature, Space and Place, Literature and Theology, Hilary Mantel

Il romanzo di Pilato - La lettura di un apocrifo
(lezione Master Bibbia e Arte 22-3-2014)

- by Maria Nisii
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- Russian Literature, Theology, Literature, Theology and Culture

The world of Panem sketched in Suzanne Collin's Hunger Games trilogy appears resolutely agnostic. References to the divine are conspicuously absent as are explicit religious beliefs-indeed not even a solitary blasphemy escapes the lips of a dying tribute. This paper argues that the virtue of hope, nonetheless, plays a crucial role in the drama. Shadows of transcendent hope, moreover, appear to emerge in embryonic form especially through song as considered within the ancient conception of carmini universitatis (songs of the universe.) As a vehicle for purification and transformation, song allows Katniss to not only survive the ordeal of the games but also navigate an overwhelming torrent of difficulty. The following opens by considering the sources of basic human hope, exploring its invocation in common parlance as well distinguishing hope from mere optimism. We then trace discussions of hope that arise in Collins's trilogy before concluding by making comparisons to formulations of transcendent hope in the biblical narrative, particularly with respect to song and hope in light of death.

- by Gerard McLarney
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- English Literature, Theology, Dystopian Literature, Biblical Theology

Christian faith seeks echoes of God and the Bible in daily life. Charles Dickens, a Christian author, wrote for the sake of entertaining his audience and pointing to the power of faith. "The Resurrector, the Resurrected, and the Lost" applies Catholic theology to Dickens's novel "A Tale of Two Cities." This essay examines the theology of resurrection in the novel, as understood through the Catholic theology of resurrection, and analyzes the virtues and relationships that make resurrection succeed-as well as the vices and hatred that make it fail. The need for resurrection in "A Tale" can be understood through characters' damage to their intellects and wills, two Thomistic qualities that distinguish humans as rational beings. Virtuous relationships and sacrifice can resurrect characters' wills and intellects, allowing them to do the same for others. However, vice can harm characters' wills and intellects and prevent them from choosing resurrection later. Through these connections, the novel shows the reader how participating in virtuous, sacrificial, and loving resurrection guides one to new life.

- by Erin Gaffney
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- English Literature, Humanities, Catholic Theology, Literature and Theology

Diplomová práce Teologická reflexe vybraných motivů v současné české poezii se zabývá teologickou reflexí motivů člověka, světa a transcendence ve třech sbírkách současné české poezie. Konkrétně jde o sbírky Úloža Ivana Martina Jirouse, Darmata Petra Hrušky a Osip míří na jih od Marie Iljašenko. V první části práce se zabývám tím, jak může teologie přistupovat k poezii a definuji dva možné přístupy, které pojmenovávám jako přístup k literatuře jako k objektu a přístup k literatuře jako k subjektu teologie. V této první části také vymezuji, v jakém smyslu může být jazyk, imaginace a metafora společným polem teologie a poezie. Zvláště metafora je totiž nosným prvkem jak poetického, tak i teologického reflektování lidské zkušenosti pobytu ve světě, jak to popisují autoři jako Paul Ricoeur, David Tracy, Paul Tillich nebo Northrop Frye, o které se ve své práci opírám. Ve druhé části práce provádím literární analýzu vybraných sbírek, která je nezbytná proto, abych ve třetí části práce, která je jejím hlavním těžištěm, mohl provést jejich teologickou reflexi. V této teologické reflexi zkoumám nejen to, jak výpovědi daných sbírek stran zkoumaných motivů korelují s výpověďmi teologie, ale také to, co v nich může být pro teologii inspirací. Provedená reflexe prokázala citlivost sbírek současné poezie pro řadu témat, která jsou teologicky významná, ať už jde o spjatost člověka s hříchem a jeho následky, pojetí člověka jako vztahové bytosti, povolání člověka k péči o stvoření nebo pokrytí celé škály napětí mezi Boží imanencí a transcendencí vůči světu. Obhajovaná diplomová práce se snaží prokázat přínosnost a inspirativnost dialogu teologie a poezie – a to i té současné české – a může tak být stimulem pro jeho pokračování jak v akademickém prostředí, tak v životě z víry dnešního křesťana nebo hledajícího člověka.

- by Tomáš Sixta
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- Theology, Literature and Theology, Theology of Art, Czech poetry

Wordsworth engages with the Christian wisdom of his day, wherein worldly wishes—for glory or wealth, permanence or improvement, adequate sensory pleasure—give way to super-sensual hope in eternity and infinity. What abides on earth is the cardinal virtue related to hope, magnanimity, the greatness of soul that aspires to great things, as well as the countervailing virtue of humility. While admiring the patriotic magnanimity and modesty of his French acquaintance Michel Beaupuy, Wordsworth also claims that our destiny lies with things unseen and—less conventionally—with an indeterminate, ever-receding future. “Our destiny, our nature, and our home, / Is with infinitude—and only there; / With hope it is, hope that can never die, / Effort, and expectation, and desire, / And something evermore about to be” (6:538-42). Still, tangible things seen, and recalled, can also be our home if we live alongside them with humility and self-distance, welcoming what is given and craving no more. Wordsworth’s near-quietism rises to drama in his verse by its aspirational quality, just as his deathless hope, or hope in deathlessness, finds no secure basis in faith and doctrine until late in the poet’s career.

- by Adam Potkay
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- English Literature, William Wordsworth, Literature and Theology, English Romanticism

45th Austrian Association for American Studies Conference 2018: American Im/Mobilities, University of Vienna, November 16–18, 2018: Trinity as Dance: Li-Young Lee’s Poetry Cycle The Undressing (2018).

- by Philipp Reisner
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- Theology, New Testament, Poetry, Mysticism

French thinker Rene Girard’s seminal work on mimetic desire and the propensity for archaic societies to practice violent sacrifice proffers a rich hermeneutic for Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games. First, the purpose of the rituals and the mythological narrative surrounding tribute sacrifice are best understood in relation to Girard’s vision of sacral violence and religious practices. Second, control for power in Panem, is essentially a vying for control over mythological narratives. Lastly, Katniss’s final actions can be viewed as the attempt to definitively dismantle systems of ritual sacrifice, thereby establishing grounds for perduring hope.

- by Gerard McLarney
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- Comparative Literature, Mythology, Literature, Rene Girard
- by Dragoș Mîrșanu
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- Literature and Theology, Literature and Philosophy, C.S. Lewis, Rowan Williams

This innovative book aims to create a 'poetics of Church' and a 'religious imaginary' as alternatives to more institutional and conventional ways of thinking and being 'Church'. Structured as a spiritual and literary journey, the work moves from models of the institutional Catholic Church into more radical and ambiguous textual spaces, which the author creates by bringing together an unorthodox group of thinkers referred to as 'poet-companions': the 16th-century founder of the Society of Jesus, Ignatius of Loyola, the French thinkers Gaston Bachelard and Hélène Cixous, the French poet Yves Bonnefoy, and the English playwright Dennis Potter.

- by Jennifer Reek
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- Women's writing, Gaston Bachelard, Martin Heidegger, Karl Rahner
- by Brian Schroeder
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- Religion, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Humanities
- by Denis Zhernokleyev
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- Religion, Russian Studies, Philosophy, Theology

Taking up the various conceptions of heroism that are conjured in the Harry Potter series, this collection examines the ways fictional heroism in the twenty-first century challenges the idealized forms of a somewhat simplistic masculinity associated with genres like the epic, romance and classic adventure story. The collection's three sections address broad issues related to genre, Harry Potter's development as the central heroic character and the question of who qualifies as a hero in the Harry Potter series. Among the topics are Harry Potter as both epic and postmodern hero; the series as a modern-day example of psychomachia; the heptalogy's indebtedness to the Gothic tradition; Harry's development in the first six film adaptations; Harry Potter and the idea of the English gentleman; Rowling's post-feminist version of female heroism as realized in the character of Hermione; adult role models in the series; and the complex depictions of heroism exhibited by...

- by Lena Steveker
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- Cultural History, English Literature, Art, Literature

The purpose of our collection of essays is to frame Shakespeare’s representation of human moral choice within the context of intellectual history. The contributors extend the Cambridge method of moderate contextualism from its origins, the study of political philosophy, to a parallel study of Shakespeare’s thought about ethics, situating Shakespeare’s ideas within contemporary debate about rival, overlapping moral paradigms. Christianity, Skepticism, Epicureanism: these and other such schools of thought serve as examples of Pocock’s “languages,” but in the realm of moral philosophy, rather than political. The collection also places Shakespeare in dialogue with a representative Continental analogue, Montaigne. Our animating premise is that Shakespeare's ideas about ethics can be best understood within a larger historical frame: sources, paradigms, and problems already extant and even highly elaborated, well before Shakespeare himself ever set pen to page. The terminus a quo is just as important as the terminus ad quem: as Bacon writes, “Things in themselves new will yet be apprehended with reference to what is old." Shakespeare’s perspective on morality does not emerge ex nihilo, the product of an inexplicable rupture, but instead draws upon a rich variety of intellectual traditions, Christian as well as classical, even in its moments of most ardent critique. The choice of the term “Renaissance” for the title, for example, rather than “early modern,” is deliberate: our hope is to foreground the resurgence of classical paradigms in this period. Over the course of Shakespeare’s life, new moral systems such as Neo-Stoicism and Epicureanism challenged prevailing ethical assumptions, began to contest the preeminence of Christianity, and laid the groundwork for what we now call “modernity”: Charles Taylor’s “secular age.”

- by Patrick Gray
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- History of Ethics, Shakespeare, Renaissance Philosophy, Philosophy of Literature

Abstract This thesis sets out to understand the theological method of Dorothy L. Sayers, a complex woman of letters. The preeminent argument is that a new and helpful paradigm for understanding Sayers’ work and evaluating her... more

- by Amy Orr-Ewing
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- Theology, Feminist Theology, Narrative, Truth

In this study, taking exception to the theological interpretations of Beckett‟s work and focusing on his trilogy, i.e., Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, and his play Waiting for Godot, I suggest that the Irish writer wants to free people from any metaphysical quest. Thus, in the first chapter an attempt is made to explore in what sense and to what extent Beckett is an atheist as well as to explain why he uses negative language when referring to a supposed divinity. The second chapter is a description of the human tragic condition as presented in his works, after God and the absolute in general have lost their effectiveness. In the last chapter, my intention is to analyze how the heroes‟ metaphysical quest functions in Beckett‟s works as well as to interpret his lyrical and mystical moments. Finally, I argue that his main objective is to go beyond any mystical, religious or metaphysical faith and hope.

In many discussions of his work Bacon is disparaging about religion, and more specifically, Christianity. And yet, in spite of his unequivocal stance, throughout his oeuvre he was relentlessly drawn towards the symbols of the Christian tradition, especially the motif of the Crucifixion and the Pope. In this article I want to compare Velázquez's painting of Pope Innocent X (1650) and Bacon's Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Innocent X (1953) in order to assess the reasons that explain Bacon's obsession with the image of the Pope. His descriptor 'study after' in the title qualifies his aims, which entailed deconstructing the Velázquez painting and reappropriating it for his own ends. I think it fitting to describe Bacon's version as being a mirror-image or photographic negative of Velázquez's. And although Bacon virulently critiques the institutions of the Church, he is dependent upon the wealth of theological sources for his imagery as well as the position of theism, which alone gives credence to his practice.

- by Rina Arya
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- Literature and Theology, Literary studies

התיאופואטיקה מבקשת להמיר את השיח התיאולוגי, המבקש לדבר על האלוהות כאובייקט מחקר "תיאורטי", ולהציב במקום זאת שיח המנכיח את האלוהות או הקדושה בחיי האדם באמצעות שימוש במטאפורות, סמלים ושפה פואטית. זרם זה, שנוסד בעקבות הקריאה בכתבי היידגר... more

This essay engages in a comparative study of Lee Chang-Dong’s "Secret Sunshine" (2007) in light of the biblical book of Job, focusing on issues of grief, recovery, and theodicy. Drawing from perspectives in philosophical, mystical, and pastoral theology, three allegorical interpretations of the film’s title are suggested. The eponymous ‘‘secret sunshine’’ adumbrates, first, the female protagonist Shin-Ae’s hidden journey toward her true self, a self in which the theological virtues of faith and love are mystically internalized. Second, it intimates the quiet, unobtrusive presence of an emphatic Immanuel in the figure of Jong-Chan, the film’s male protagonist. Finally, through a meditative exegesis of the film’s closing sequences, it will be argued that ‘‘secret sunshine’’ points toward the transcendent beauty and comfort that may be found in the quotidian and commonplace.

- by Teng-Kuan Ng
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- Comparative Literature, Film Studies, Religion and Film, Film and Theology
- by Leopoldo Cervantes-Ortiz
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- Literature and Theology, Latin American Poetry

This paper aims to show that fictional narratives, as integrated products of the author’s imagination and reason, can serve theological dialogues as new ways to present religious ideas and lives. This is possible because they show religious truth immersed in everyday life rather than try to explain it in the language of doctrines and propositions. This paper particularly focuses on the characters in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead and Home, which center around the implied question, “Can a person change?” In fact, a simple answer is given through a character. However, I argue that this question can be explored and possibly answered through other important questions suggested in the novels, including “What is a soul?” and “What does it mean to come home?” These play a crucial role in not only answering the question but also developing the characters and the plot. They also bring out important discussions on the concept of an individual soul, human depravity, the reality of father’s love encompassing both joy and sorrow. Lastly, I discuss how faith and hope are intricately linked to a possibility of forgiveness in relationships and demonstrate how this is shown through subtle changes of two characters in the two novels.

- by Esther Ahn
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- Literature and Theology, Marilynne Robinson

Ninguém imaginaria que o mesmo autor que em maio de 1968 escreveu uma tese tão densa e provocadora como Towards a theology of liberation: an exploration of the encounter between the languages of humanistic messianism and messianic humanism escreveria décadas mais tarde poesia, oração, mística e teologia. Em sua obra, Rubem estilo dominado pela poesia e o aprofundamento completamente antidogmático que já havia anunciado, muito veladamente, em seus priprocessos revolucionários que seriam publicados no seu país apenas no século XXI, 40 anos mais tarde. Além do lugar que ocupa no panorama 1 rio Teológico de Princeton, Nueva Jersey, 16 de octubre de 2014. 2 A teologia de Rubem Alves: poesia, brincadeira e erotismo (Campinas: Papirus, 2005). REFLEXUS -Ano VIII, n. 12, 2014/2 teológico e intelectual desde sua juventude, Rubem Alves é também tornaria alguém que chegou bastante tarde à poesia, mas muitos de seus ensaios, que reivindicam o corpo, a imaginação, o erótico e a magia, mente, o possuíram de corpo e alma.

recensione Archivio Teologico Torinese 1/2016, 221-23

The present study examines a strikingly modern and original interpretation of the Kabbalistic theory of tsimtsum, of the withdrawal of God and the ensuing veil spread over the ultimate reality, in Yann Martel’s bestselling novel Life of Pi. This interpretation advances two different possibilities, the veracity of which cannot be determined, regarding whether tsimtsum is literal or allegorical. These two different readings hold vastly divergent implications for the human soul, its approach to life and its perception of God. Martel’s interpretation is herein compared to classical Jewish sources from Lurianic Kabbalah to twentieth-century thought. In addition, I argue that the creative interpretations of Life of Pi touch directly upon broader questions of faith and meaning, and thus I place them into conversation with the of the teachings of William James, Martin Buber and Ludwig Wittgenstein and in a confrontation with Karl Marx’s and Friedrich Nietzsche’s secularism.

- by Daniel Reiser
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- Religion, Sociology of Religion, English Literature, Theology

Both of us teach in the Duke English Department and hold secondary appointments in the Duke Divinity School. In this essay, we reflect on impediments to teaching Christian literature in contemporary English departments, in particular the naturalistic, anti-metaphysical dogma pervading humanistic inquiry, yet also the widespread theological illiteracy among today's undergraduates and graduates. Still, students usually embrace focused ethical and theological inquiry, as well as the attention to textual and hermeneutic issues called for by much Christian literature across the centuries. We conclude by outlining options for a more productive future alignment of literary and theological inquiry and pedagogy.

- by Thomas Pfau
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- Critical Theory, Philosophical Theology, Literary Criticism, Literature and Theology

recensione per Archivio Teologico Torinese XXI, 2/2015, 482-4

- by Maria Nisii
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- Literature, Literature and Theology

This chapter looks at the development of the doctrine of 'poetic justice' from Plato to the late 17th century and the role it played in the transformation of Aristotle's notion of tragic catharsis in the Renaissance theory of tragedy and... more

- by Michael Lurie
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- Intellectual History, Comparative Literature, Aesthetics, History of Ideas

An examination of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Theseus’s criticism of poetry reveals that the Duke is not a brutish advocate of rationality, but it does reveal his appreciation of the inescapable importance of poetry for civic education. This explains his use of the theater in the founding of a new Athenian political order, and his successful efforts to prevent the news of the midsummer night from being retold inside the city walls. The Duke’s censorship is made more intriguing by Shakespeare’s cunning decision to identify the madness presented in this play and the biblical madness of the holy spirit as described by Paul in Corinthians. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is itself an example of how the judicious, or civic use of poetry can have a profound effect on political life, as Shakespeare demonstrates by redefining the supernatural fairies as a source of human benefit rather than harm.

- by Rafael Major
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- Political Philosophy, History of Ideas, Political Theory, Early Modern History

This paper, adapted from my doctoral thesis and presented at a CCL conference at Notre Dame, deals with the scriptural dimensions and possibly pretensions of what I consider to be Golding's greatest novel. It is primarily concerned with... more

- by Nikolay Epplée
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- Literature and Theology, C.S. Lewis, The Inklings