Introduction to Religion and Literature

Mark Knight is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Toronto, Canada. His books include Chesterton and Evil (2004), Biblical Religion and the Novel, 1700-2000 (co-edited with Thomas Woodman, 2006), Nineteenth-Century Religion and Literature: An Introduction (co-written with Emma Mason, OUP, 2006), An Introduction to Religion and Literature (2009) and Religion, Literature and the Imagination (co-edited with Louise Lee, 2009). Current projects include: a monograph entitled Good Words: Evangelicalism and the Victorian Novel; a co-authored book (with Emma Mason) entitled Faithful Reading: Poetry and Christian Practice; and a co-edited volume (with Jo Carruthers and Andrew Tate) entitled A Bible and Literature Reader. With Emma Mason, Mark Knight edits the book series New Directions in Religion and Literature for Bloomsbury Academic.

"A brilliant and concise introduction to the increasingly innovative and ever-urgent relationship between religion and literature. Knight's lucid and percipient grasp of theological and biblical debate, as well as of recent theoretical and philosophical methodologies, grants his close readings a rare insight students and academics will readily appreciate. In his sharp exploration of ideas such as the creation, sin and eschatology, Knight leads us through a dazzling array of literary texts (from Shakespeare and Donne, to Rossetti and Dickens, Rushdie and McEwan) to illustrate what it means to pursue a religious reading. In doing so, he reveals that religious reading, an approach often wrongly assumed to be dependent on sacred or moral content, is rather grounded in the critical ability to renew and re-imagine language within a framework that opens up new ways of thinking about subjectivity, community, hope, vision and love." - Emma Mason, Senior Lecturer, University of Warwick, UK

• Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Disclosing Sacred Wor(l)ds: the Doctrine of Creation and the Possible Worlds of Literature 2. Beings in Relation: Otherness, Personhood and the Language of the Trinity 3. Mediating the Divine: Law, Gift and Justice 4. Interpretative Communities: Scripture, Tolerance and the People of God 5. The Stain of Sin: Traces of Transgression in the Modern World 6. A Hope and a Future: Suffering and Redemption in Eschatological Perspective Bibliography Index