Literature and Theology

Dr Heather Walton, Head of Department Theology and Religious Studies, Director of the Centre for Literature, Theology and the Arts, University of Glasgow

'Some imagined we would now be living in a post-disciplinary age. But the disciplines still persist; those traditions of question and purposed wonder that let us see the world with eyes both learned and quizzical. And there are still those who work at the edges of such terrains, who wander, though determinedly, in the lands between, in places that are at once familiar and disconcertingly different. This fine collection of essays reports on the detours and delights of travelling betwixt theology and literature, those forms of writing that variously witness to and invent the human and its changing conditions. Written by some of the most acute and dogged of travellers, these essays discover again the strangeness of our interdependency on one another and on the differently other that sometimes our relationships bespeak.' Gerard Loughlin, Durham University, UK 'Literature and Theology challenges the multidisciplinary tourism that so often passes for interdisciplinary scholarship (35)... [a] welcome read...' Journal of Religion 'The volume is a genuine attempt to define the current study of literature and theology and suggest ways to move it forward into further interdisciplinary spaces.' Modern Believing 'Chou and Van Andel, through analysis of C.S. Lewis and Coleridge, respectively, demonstrate how irony and symbol are foundational to both literature and theology. These essays are highly recommended for the serious student and scholar in the field of theology and literature.' Religious Studies Review 'One can only be grateful for a volume like this that engages scholars across the generations in this developing field by marking ’spaces’ where conversation about an commitment to such flourishing might transpire.' Worship

• Contents: Introduction, Heather Walton; Interdisciplinarity in impossible times: studying religion through literature and the arts, David Jasper; Discipline beyond disciplines, Andrew W. Haas; When love is not true: literature and theology after romance, Heather Walton; Two (and two and two) towers: interdisciplinary borrowing and the limits of interpretation, Alana Vincent; Silence, rupture, theology. Towards a post-Christian interdisciplinarity, Mattias Martinson; Female genius: Jane Leade (1624-1704), Alison Jasper; Re-imagining the sacred in Caribbean literature, Fiona Darroch; Theological aesthetics and beauty as revelatory: an interdisciplinary assessment, John O'Connor; The sublime and the beautiful: intersections between theology and literature, Paul S. Fiddes; Touch and trembling: intimating interdisciplinary bodies, Mark Godin; A story of love and death: exploring space for the philosophical imaginary, Pamela Sue Anderson; The Devil in disciplines: the hermeneutic of Devil-hood in C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters, Christine Hsi-Chin Chou; Interdisciplinary poetics: S.T. Coleridge and the possibility of symbol-making after the word, Kelly Van Andel; Index.