Religious Dialectics of Pain and Imagination

Bradford T. Stull is Assistant Professor of English at Indiana University-East.

"There are many things I like about this book. First, and above all, it is concerned with how to be a responsible human being in the contemporary world, and the author's voice is appropriate to that concern: honest, intelligent, compassionate. Second, the book, ambitiously, aims to bring into dialogue two of the most powerful groups of theory on the scene at present. This is to tackle two major questions of pressing concern to many: on the one hand, can or does postructuralist theory have an ethic; on the other, how limiting is the particularity on which liberationist theories are based. Third, I like the author's choice of rhetoric and dialectic as a way to stage this confrontation and to address the ethical questions that concern him." — Lynn Poland, Davidson College

• Acknowledgments 1. The Way to Proceed RhetoricPostmodern versus LiberationistsPainImaginationThe ReligiousBurke, Merton, Freire, Romero 2. Burke's Beloved Cynosure and Sinecure The Ambiguity of HistoryThe Plurality of LanguageImaginationPainThe Religious 3. 'Poetic Rhetoric and Baffling Illogic': Merton's The Geography of Lograire The Plurality of LanguageThe Ambiguity of HistoryPainImagination 4. Zoon Phonanta: Freire's New Human PainImaginationLanguage and History 5. Romero's Pastoral Letters: 'Goodtidings to Those Who Suffer' Pain ImaginationLanguage, History, Liberation Afterword Notes Works Cited Index