D. Jasper - Böcker

This exploration of the relationship between literature and religion adopts a series of different strategies and perspectives, aiming to provide an introduction to the variety of ways in which literature, literary theory and theology are related. The doctrine of the Resurrection, morality and ethics, aesthetics, hermeneutics and issues of intentionality and referentiality are all discussed in the belief that, in literature, we glimpse at times the fulfilment of our nature, cast in the imaginative genius of great art and continuing to persuade us of the value and ultimate truth of the theological enterprise.

Chapters deal with specific texts from Euripides to contemporary fiction, and with the traditions of cultural theory from Nietszche to Benjamin, to Derrida and what David Klemm identifies as the tragedy of present theology.

Beginning with the insights of the "canonical criticism" of Brevard Childs and James Sanders, this book explores the canon of the Bible through readings in literature, art and cinema. It places the Bible within the concerns of contemporary feminist thought, postmodern anxiety and modern apocalyptic thought. It returns the reader to a sense of the centrality of the biblical canon, expanding the notion of "reading" to picture and film.

This text is an interdisciplinary study of Romanticism which focuses on the reception of the Biblical canon in poetry, art and theory. The Bible is acknowledged as the heart of European culture, but as its status as the sacred text of Judaism and Christianity becomes questionable, it remains at the turning point between sacred and secular art in the modern world. The insights of Romanticism are crucial for our understanding of postmodernism as a fundamentally religious movement which acknowledges both the death and rebirth of religious language.

These essays are written by scholars from widely differing disciplines and traditions. Theologians, philosophers, literary critics and historians of ideas approach the question of how the judaeo-Christian tradition of theological reflection has suffered from and will negotiate the emergence of postmodern theory and practice in literature and criticism. Chapters deal with specific texts from Euripides to contemporary fiction, and with the traditions of cultural theory from Nietszche to Benjamin, to Derrida and what David Klemm identifies as the tragedy of present theology.