These collected essays demonstrate the variegation of the religious imagination. By examining the works of philosophers, theologians and novelists, the essays seek to answer the question Jesus asked his disciples, "who do you say that I am?"
John C. Hawley is a Professor of English at Santa Clara University. He has served on the executive committee of the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association, and the MLA's executive committees on Literature and Religion, on Literature in English Other Than British and American, and on Postcolonial Studies, and served on its Delegate Assembly. He has been President of the Faculty Senate here, and has served as President of the U.S. chapter of the Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies. His research interests include victorian and postcolonial literatures, gender studies and the intersection between religion and literature. He has edited a number of books including The Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies, Postcolonial, Queer, and Divine Aporia.
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"This uneven collection of essays ranges from a handful likely to interest readers concerned with religion and literature to the majority aimed at limited, parochial audiences. The most intriguing of the 15 pieces are those by Jo Ellen Parker on the "typological imagination" in George Eliot; Andrew Greeley on his own controversial novels; William Franke on Milton; Christiaan Theodoor Lievestro on irony and paradox in Erasmus; and Jane Kristof on the "mystique of suffering" in the work of artist Georges Rouault and the Roman Catholic revival in France. The more theoretical essays--Edward T. Oakes on "type and pattern in historical narratives," in which techniques of "internal cohesion" are perceptively treated and an eschatological approach to myth defended, Gavin D'Costa on the "tyranny of the secular imagination," or Terrance R. Wright on Derrida--range from astute to self-serving. Most remaining essays focus on odd, obscure topics or figures. One cannot necessarily quarrel with some of the contributors' a priori assumptions; few, though, are as perceptive as Paul Crowley's statement (in the essay on Loyola) that "a religious imagination thoroughly grounded in concrete human experience ... can only conclude to a God who is correlatively real and liberating," but the collection as a whole only fitfully rises to defend such an imagination. For large undergraduate and advanced collections only." -Choice "Gives serious attention to the relationship between the religions and literatures of the East (a feature no other anthology like this can claim)...a welcome addition to books exploring the boundaries of art, literature, and religion." -Publishers Weekly
