Jo Carruthers - Böcker

This book traces the emergence and development of Literature and the Bible as a field of scholarship, presenting key critical essays alongside more recent criticism that explores new directions. The Western literary tradition has a long and complex relationship with the Jewish and Christian scriptures. Authors draw on the Bible in numerous ways and for different reasons, and there is also the myriad of subconscious ways through which the biblical text enters literary culture. Biblical stories, characters, motifs and references permeate the whole of the literary tradition.In the last thirty years there has been a growth of critical interest in this relationship. In Literature and the Bible: A Reader the editors bring together a selection of the key critical and theoretical materials from this time, providing a comprehensive resource for students and scholars.Each chapter contains:• An introduction from the editors, contextualising the material within and alerting readers to some of the historic debates that feed into the extracts chosen• A set of previously published extracts of substantial length, offering greater contextualisation and allowing the Reader to be used flexibly• Lists of further reading, providing readers with a wide variety of other sources and perspectives.Designed to be used alongside the Bible and selected literary texts, this book is essential reading for anyone studying Literature and the Bible in undergraduate English, Religion and Theology degrees.

This book traces the emergence and development of Literature and the Bible as a field of scholarship, presenting key critical essays alongside more recent criticism that explores new directions. The Western literary tradition has a long and complex relationship with the Jewish and Christian scriptures. Authors draw on the Bible in numerous ways and for different reasons, and there is also the myriad of subconscious ways through which the biblical text enters literary culture. Biblical stories, characters, motifs and references permeate the whole of the literary tradition.In the last thirty years there has been a growth of critical interest in this relationship. In Literature and the Bible: A Reader the editors bring together a selection of the key critical and theoretical materials from this time, providing a comprehensive resource for students and scholars.Each chapter contains:• An introduction from the editors, contextualising the material within and alerting readers to some of the historic debates that feed into the extracts chosen• A set of previously published extracts of substantial length, offering greater contextualisation and allowing the Reader to be used flexibly• Lists of further reading, providing readers with a wide variety of other sources and perspectives.Designed to be used alongside the Bible and selected literary texts, this book is essential reading for anyone studying Literature and the Bible in undergraduate English, Religion and Theology degrees.

This book approaches the holiday of Purim as profane, freed to human use and ends, in order to consider the political legacy of the biblical story of Esther in festival and art works. Jo Carruthers explores carnival and synagogue practices, the purimshpil (Purim’s own dramatic genre), illuminated Esther scrolls, as well as artworks by Botticelli, Millais and Jan Steen. The complex and astute interrogation of political life in such festival and artworks is analysed through theories of sovereignty, law, precarity and hospitality by key political thinkers such as Giorgio Agamben, Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, and Jacques Rancière. Carruthers considers different motifs of boundary conservation and dissolution, as a means of contemplating the political implications of Purim and the Esther story for diaspora politics. How is sovereignty aspired to and attained by marginalized and threatened communities? How can one respond to the ethical call of hospitality to relax sovereign boundaries whilst protecting and celebrating that which is exceptional? The practice of giving gifts, mishloach manos, offers a model of hospitality that together with Purim’s profane impulse is epitomized in the final chapter’s discussion of a 2018 Brooklyn purimshpil, that offers a riotous ridiculing of white supremacist rhetoric, norms of domination, capitalist inequalities, modern slavery and ablest identities and assumptions.

This book approaches the holiday of Purim as profane, freed to human use and ends, in order to consider the political legacy of the biblical story of Esther in festival and art works. Jo Carruthers explores carnival and synagogue practices, the purimshpil (Purim’s own dramatic genre), illuminated Esther scrolls, as well as artworks by Botticelli, Millais and Jan Steen. The complex and astute interrogation of political life in such festival and artworks is analysed through theories of sovereignty, law, precarity and hospitality by key political thinkers such as Giorgio Agamben, Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, and Jacques Rancière. Carruthers considers different motifs of boundary conservation and dissolution, as a means of contemplating the political implications of Purim and the Esther story for diaspora politics. How is sovereignty aspired to and attained by marginalized and threatened communities? How can one respond to the ethical call of hospitality to relax sovereign boundaries whilst protecting and celebrating that which is exceptional? The practice of giving gifts, mishloach manos, offers a model of hospitality that together with Purim’s profane impulse is epitomized in the final chapter’s discussion of a 2018 Brooklyn purimshpil, that offers a riotous ridiculing of white supremacist rhetoric, norms of domination, capitalist inequalities, modern slavery and ablest identities and assumptions.

By outlining Protestantism and Englishness in early-modern literature to the present-day, this study reveals how other religious identities can be alienated in British society. "England's Secular Scripture" seeks to trace English Islamophobia to its roots in England's Protestant past, and more specifically to its aesthetic and literary rooting in Protestant values. Carruthers argues that English antagonism towards Islam lies in part in the formation of English identities in early modern Reformation Protestantism. The book traces the transposing, and secularizing, of Reformation doctrines into a 'Protestant aesthetic'; of simplicity, individualism, and rationalism in the literature of Spenser and Milton. Wordsworth, Hardy, Eliot and Orwell, among others, perpetuate this aesthetic, one that continues to shape English mythologies up to the present day. Carruthers sheds light on contemporary Islamophobia, helping us to understand that Englishness is not merely a secular identity (combating what is seen as an irrational fundamentalist identity), but one informed, paradoxically, by Protestant logic and history.This series aims to showcase new work at the forefront of religion and literature through short studies written by leading and rising scholars in the field. Books will pursue a variety of theoretical approaches as they engage with writing from different religious and literary traditions. Collectively, the series will offer a timely critical intervention to the interdisciplinary crossover between religion and literature, speaking to wider contemporary interests and mapping out new directions for the field in the early twenty-first century.

By outlining Protestantism and Englishness in early-modern literature to the present-day, this study reveals how other religious identities can be alienated in British society. "England's Secular Scripture" seeks to trace English Islamophobia to its roots in England's Protestant past, and more specifically to its aesthetic and literary rooting in Protestant values. Carruthers argues that English antagonism towards Islam lies in part in the formation of English identities in early modern Reformation Protestantism. The book traces the transposing, and secularizing, of Reformation doctrines into a 'Protestant aesthetic'; of simplicity, individualism, and rationalism in the literature of Spenser and Milton. Wordsworth, Hardy, Eliot and Orwell, among others, perpetuate this aesthetic, one that continues to shape English mythologies up to the present day. Carruthers sheds light on contemporary Islamophobia, helping us to understand that Englishness is not merely a secular identity (combating what is seen as an irrational fundamentalist identity), but one informed, paradoxically, by Protestant logic and history.This series aims to showcase new work at the forefront of religion and literature through short studies written by leading and rising scholars in the field. Books will pursue a variety of theoretical approaches as they engage with writing from different religious and literary traditions. Collectively, the series will offer a timely critical intervention to the interdisciplinary crossover between religion and literature, speaking to wider contemporary interests and mapping out new directions for the field in the early twenty-first century.

This interdisciplinary commentary ranges from early midrashic interpretation to contemporary rewritings introducing interpretations of the only biblical book not to mention God. Unearths a wealth of neglected rewritings inspired by the story’s relevance to themes of nationhood, rebellion, providence, revenge, female heroism, Jewish identity, exile, genocide and ‘multiculturalism’Reveals the various struggles and strategies used by religious commentators to make sense of this only biblical book that does not mention GodAsks why Esther is underestimated by contemporary feminist scholars despite a long history of subversive rewritingsCompares the most influential Jewish and Christian interpretations and interpretersIncludes an introduction to the book’s myriad representations in literature, music, and artPublished in the reception-history series, Blackwell Bible Commentaries

This interdisciplinary commentary ranges from early midrashic interpretation to contemporary rewritings introducing interpretations of the only biblical book not to mention God. Unearths a wealth of neglected rewritings inspired by the story’s relevance to themes of nationhood, rebellion, providence, revenge, female heroism, Jewish identity, exile, genocide and ‘multiculturalism’Reveals the various struggles and strategies used by religious commentators to make sense of this only biblical book that does not mention GodAsks why Esther is underestimated by contemporary feminist scholars despite a long history of subversive rewritingsCompares the most influential Jewish and Christian interpretations and interpretersIncludes an introduction to the book’s myriad representations in literature, music, and artPublished in the reception-history series, Blackwell Bible Commentaries

Anticipatory Materialisms explores nineteenth and early twentieth-century literature thatanticipates and pre-empts the recent philosophical ‘turn’ to materiality and affect.

Anticipatory Materialisms explores nineteenth and early twentieth-century literature thatanticipates and pre-empts the recent philosophical ‘turn’ to materiality and affect.

The contributions take a variety of forms including fiction and nonfiction and cover topics ranging from sand dunes to sand mining, from seaside stories to shoreline architecture, from sand grains to global sand movements, from narratives of the setting up of bed and breakfasts to stories of seaside decline.