Wesley A. Kort - Böcker

Strongly divided evaluations of C. S. Lewis's work persist today based on his perspectives and writings on religion, particularly Christianity. Those who approve tend to see his work as of value primarily because it gives his academic and cultural value to his advocacy of Christianity. Conversely, those who disapprove of that advocacy tend to see the worth of his writing as vitiated by his apologetic agenda. Wesley Kort's book sets a new standard in C. S. Lewis studies, arguing for an alternative perspective that considers Lewis's work as a whole, investigating why and at what points Lewis turns to religion generally and to Christianity particularly in order to advance his arguments.Reading C. S. Lewis: A Commentary provides a captivating look into the many cultural, academic, and literary contexts that influenced his many texts. The book examines the standing of Lewis's work, how best to approach his work, as well as the understandings that lead to mistaken readings of him. This indispensable C. S. Lewis resource comments separately on each of more than a dozen of Lewis's major books, connecting readers to the particular literature, religion, and philosophy of C. S. Lewis. These commentaries are free-standing essays, analyses and interpretations of texts that can be read individually and in any order. Scholars and fans of C. S. Lewis will appreciate Kort's commentary and guide to the texts in this new light.

Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) was a distinguished scholar of medieval and Renaissance literature who taught at both Oxford University and Cambridge University. After his conversion to Christianity, Lewis began writing Christian apologetic works aimed at a popular audience. It is for these works that Lewis is now best remembered; especially in the U.S., where his books have sold in the millions and continue to be popular today. Perhaps because of this popularity, however, Lewis's Christian writings are generally dismissed by theologians as oversimplified and conceptually flawed. With this book, Wesley A. Kort hopes to rehabilitate Lewis and to demonstrate the value and continuing relevance of his work. Kort not only retrieves Lewis from the now-dated context of his writings, but also wrests him from the hands of evangelicals who have turned his word into gospel and mistaken his attacks on modernity for a retreat from the world. Kort addresses and refutes common prejudices about Lewis and shows that, although Lewis was sharply critical of the materialism and narcissism of modern culture, he nevertheless insisted that only through culture can Christian teachings effectively shape moral character. Lewis's desire for a fruitful, interactive relationship between Christianity and culture sharply distinguishes him from neo-orthodox theology and many contemporary Christian rejections of culture.

In this analysis of theological conflict, Wesley Kort treats theologies as discourses that generate power and significance by their relations to and differences from one another. He identifies the traditional or putative claims of theological power and meaning—sources, referents, and patterns or structures—as distractions from or even concealments of the discursive situation in which theologies arise.Kort first describes the dynamics of difference and conflicts constituted by theologies and the importance of power for opposing theologies. He provides a model that demonstrates why differences and conflicts, rather than occasional or peripheral effects of theology, are required as central causes. He then applies the analysis and model in the task of reading theologies of more than a dozen modern and contemporary figures.In his conclusion, Kort returns to the cultural situation he sketched at the beginning, one that creates the conditions for the study and that is often called "postmodern." Kort calls it "a culture of scripture and belief," and he discusses prospects for theology in a culture not characterized by the fact and certainty. "The culture of scripture and belief" calls for theologies that are both forceful and vulnerable to critique.

Given its affinity with questions of identity, autobiography offers a way into the interior space between author and reader, especially when writers define themselves in terms of religion. In his exploration of this ""textual intimacy,"" Wesley Kort begins with a theorisation of what it means to say who one is and how one's self-account as a religious person stands in relation to other forms of self-identification. He then provides a critical analysis of autobiographical texts by nine contemporary American writers -- including Maya Angelou, Philip Roth, and Anne Lamott -- who give religion a positive place in their accounts of who they are. Finally, in disclosing his own religious identity, Kort concludes with a meditation on several meanings of the word assumption.

"Textuality, Culture, and Scripture", a study of the necessary and close relations between the three concepts, describes the prominent role of texts and textuality in Western modernity and the exchange of textual for material understandings of culture that becomes apparent in the middle of the twentieth century. Taking its starting point in the turn or return in cultural studies to textuality, the argument addresses the necessary role of texts and textuality in cultural, group, and personal identities. Central to the argument is the thesis that “scripture,” rather than an occasional or optional textual category, should be seen as playing a necessary role in an adequate textual theory.