Cross Currents in Religion and Culture – serie

Trajectories of Mysticism in Theory and Literature is a collection of essays which considers how recent critical theory contributes to debates about mystical and negative theology. This collection draws upon a wide range of material, including Biblical texts, autobiographical, confessional and fictional writing from the sixteenth century to the twentieth century, divinity in English, German, Spanish and French traditions, as well as work on God and metaphysics by Schelling, Weil, Levinas, Derrida, de Ma, Irigaray, and Cixous.

This interdisciplinary and international collection explores the role of the arts in shaping contemporary religion and politics. The authors ask about the future of viable communities and democratic cultures in a postmodern world, looking for clues in artistic practices and institutions and their impact on how people create history and interpret texts. The collection shows that the arts are central to struggles over the shape of society in the new millennium.

This collection examines the ways in which religion and literature are capable of renewing what the eminent German philosopher Jürgen Habermas refers to as 'the public sphere'.

This text explores the biblical influence on the style and structure of works by Fielding, Defoe, Eliot, Kafka, Dostoevsky and others. Kafka's "The Trial" has been termed a "midrash" on the book of Job (Northrop Frye). But this book concludes that it is also a debate with Job. Whilst other novelists could not manage without the Bible, at the same time "it would not do". The book concludes with two chapters on the Israeli novelists, S.Y. Agnon and A.B. Yehoshua. The study of theology and religion calls upon a wide range of interdisciplinary skills and cultural perspectives to illuminate the concerns at the heart of religious faith. Books in this series variously explore the contributions made by literature, philosophy and science in forming our historical and contemporary understanding of religious issues and theological perspectives.

This volume examines the exploratory work of metaphors for time in astrophysical cosmology, chaos theory, evolutionary biology and neuroscience. Happel claims that the Christian God is intimately involved at every level of physical and biological science. He compares how scientists and theologians both generate stories, metaphors and symbols about the universe and asks "who is the God who invents me?"

This collection of essays considers how recent critical theory contributes to debates about mystical and negative theology. It draws upon a wide range of material, including Biblical texts, autobiographical, confessional and fictional writing from the 16th to the 20th century, and divinity in English, German, Spanish and French traditions, as well as work on God and metaphysics by Schelling, Weil, Levinas, Derrida, de Ma, Irigaray, and Cixous.

This collection examines the ways in which religion and literature are capable of renewing what the eminent German philosopher Jürgen Habermas refers to as 'the public sphere'. The essays range from close commentaries on particular texts ( King Lear, The Brothers Karamazov, 'Bartleby the Scrivener') to surveys of the careers of selected writers who have entered the public sphere (Elizabeth Gaskell, W.H. Auden, Raymond Carver, Sherman Alexie), to historical and theoretical examinations of various national and international public spheres.

This text explores the genesis, development, and religious significance of a literary and iconographic motif, involving a gang of urchins, usually male, who mock or assault a holy or eccentric person, typically an adult. Originating in the biblical tale of Elisha's mockery (2 Kings 2.23-24), this motif recurs in literature, hagiography, and art, from antiquity up to our own time, strikingly defying the conventional Judeo Christian and Romantic image of the child as a symbol of innocence.

Read in the context of emerging 19th-century women's theology, Rossetti's devotional prose shows a distinct preference for the "wisdom texts" of scripture, and foreshadows the work of leading feminist theologians today. This volume disputes the assumption that Rossetti was a follower of Keble and Pusey, and shows how her dissatisfaction with the male-dominated call to celibacy led her to reject their notions of worldliness, and to form a closer bond with the physical world and the body.

Michael Giffin offers a reading of Austen's six published novels against the background of a "long 18th century" that stretched from the Restoration to the Regency. He demonstrates that Austen is a neo-classical author of the Enlightenment who writes through the twin prisms of British empiricism and Georgian Anglicanism. Giffin's focus is on how Austen's novels mirror a belief in natural law and natural order and how they reflect John Locke's theory of knowledge through reason, revelation and reflection on experience.

Most modern literary theory is explicitly anti-theological. This book states the case for a contemporary literary theory whose principles derive from Christian theology. Ferretter argues that it remains rationally and ethically legitimate to use theological language in literary theory despite the objections to such a theory posed by deconstruction, Marxism and psychoanalysis. He concludes with an assessment of how such a theory can be formulated and used in contemporary cultural analysis.

Metaphors for God's Time in Science and Religion examines the exploratory work of metaphors for time in astrophysical cosmology, chaos theory, evolutionary biology and neuroscience. He compares how scientists and theologians both generate stories, metaphors and symbols about the universe and asks 'who is the God who invents me?

Evil Children in Religion, Literature and Art explores the genesis, development, and religious significance of a literary and iconographic motif, involving a gang of urchins, usually male, who mock or assault a holy or eccentric person, typically an adult.

This volume disputes the assumption that Rossetti was a follower of Keble and Pusey, and shows how her dissatisfaction with the male-dominated call to celibacy led her to reject their notions of worldliness, and to form a closer bond with the physical world and the body.

Most modern literary theory is explicitly anti-theological. Ferretter argues that it remains rationally and ethically legitimate to use theological language in literary theory despite the objections to such a theory posed by deconstruction, Marxism and psychoanalysis.