Studies in Religion and the Arts – serie

In 1897 – only two years after the invention of film – the first feature film about Jesus appeared. This and other films about Jesus became examples for and an inspiration for films on other important religious figures like Rama, Buddha and Muhammad. Although religious leaders did not always approve of these films, they did find a ready audience among believers.This book explores these films and looks at how these films dealt with the fundamental question of portraying an individual thought to have either divine status or a very special and unique status among human beings. This book will thus benefit not only students of religious film but also those studying the portrayal of central religious figures in the contemporary world.

This book is not designed to define the sacred. It is, rather, a bringing together of case histories (a rich, varied collection from medieval, early modern and nineteenth-century contexts in England and Wales) that goes beyond familiar paradigms to explore the dynamic, protean interaction, in different times and places, between sacred space and text. Essentially an interdisciplinary enterprise, it focuses a range of historical and critical methodologies on that complex process of transformation and transmission whereby spiritual intuitions, experiences and teachings are made palpable ‘in art and architecture, poetry and prayer, in histories, scriptures and liturgies, even landscapes. So the sacred, variously constructed and inscribed, makes itself felt ‘on the pulse’; is a presence, a voice even now not stilled.

"The Crescent on the Temple" by Pamela Berger elucidates an obscured tradition—how the Dome of the Rock came to stand for the Temple of Solomon in Christian, Muslim, and Jewish art. The crusaders called the Dome of the Rock the “Temple of the Lord,” while Muslim imagery depicted Solomon enthroned within the domed structure. Jews knew that the ancient Temple had been destroyed. Nevertheless, in their imagery, they commonly labeled the Muslim shrine “The Temple.” That domed “Temple” was often represented with a crescent on top. This iconography, long hidden in plain sight, reflects one aspect of an historical affinity between Jews and Muslims.

Titus shoots his arrows bearing petitions for justice to the gods; Claudius asks ‘what form of prayer can serve my turn?’; Lear wishes he could crack the vault of heaven with his prayers. Again and again, Shakespeare dramatises the scenario of the unheard prayer, in which the one who prays does so full well in the knowledge that no one is listening, interested, or even there at all. The scenario is keyed to the anxieties that surrounded the act of praying itself, so full as it was with controversy, the centrepiece of sectarian dispute over what was good and bad religion. This study reads the unheard prayer scenario as itself an appeal for a vision of tolerance, unobtainable perhaps, but nevertheless desired and imagined.

Mary Magdalene, Iconographic Studies from the Middle Ages to the Baroque examines the iconographic inventions in Magdalene imagery and the contextual factors that shaped her representation in visual art from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. Unique to other saints in the medieval lexicon, images of Mary Magdalene were altered over time to satisfy the changing needs of her patrons as well as her audience. By shedding light on the relationship between the Magdalene and her patrons, both corporate and private, as well as the religious institutions and regions where her imagery is found, this anthology reveals the flexibility of the Magdalene’s character in art and, in essence, the reinvention of her iconography from one generation to the next.

Protestant theology and culture are known for a reserved, at times skeptical, attitude to the use of art and aesthetic forms of expression in a religious context. In Transcendence and Sensoriness, this attitude is analysed and discussed both theoretically and through case studies considered in a broad theological and philosophical framework of religious aesthetics. Nordic scholars of theology, philosophy, art, music, and architecture, discuss questions of transcendence, the human senses, and the arts in order to challenge established perspectives within the aesthetics of religion and theology.

Modernism, Christianity and Apocalypse stages an encounter between the fields of ‘Modernism and Christianity’ and ‘Apocalypse Studies’. The modernist impulse to ‘make it new’, to transform and reform culture, is an incipiently apocalyptic one, poised between imaginative representations of an Old Era or civilization and the experimental promise of the New. Christianity figures in formative tension with the ‘new’, but its apocalyptic paradigms continued to impact modernist visions of cultural revitalization.In three sections tracing a rough chronology from the late nineteenth century fin de siècle, via interwar conflicts and the rise of ‘political religions’, to post-1945 anxieties such as the Bomb, this thematic is explored in nineteen far-ranging scholarly contributions, outlining a distinctive and fresh interdisciplinary field of study.

In Spiritus Loci Bert Daelemans, who graduated as an architect and a theologian, provides an interdisciplinary method for the theological assessment of church architecture. Rather than a theory, this method is based on case studies of contemporary buildings (1995-2015), which are often criticized for lacking theological depth. In a threefold method, the author brings to light the ways in which architecture can be theology – or theotopy – by focusing on topoi (places) rather than logoi (words). Churches reveal our relationship with God by engaging our body, mind, and community. This method proves relevant not only for the way we perceive these buildings, but also for the way we use them, especially in our prophetic engagement for a better world.

In The Medieval Presence in the Modernist Aesthetic: Unattended Moments, editors Simone Celine Marshall and Carole M. Cusack have brought together essays on literary Modernism that uncover medieval themes and tropes that have previously been “unattended”, that is, neglected or ignored. A historical span of a century is covered, from musical modernist Richard Wagner’s final opera Parsifal (1882) to Russell Hoban’s speculative fiction Riddley Walker (1980), and themes of Arthurian literature, scholastic philosophy, Irish legends, classical philology, dream theory, Orthodox theology and textual exegesis are brought into conversation with key Modernist writers, including T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Samuel Beckett, Marcel Proust, W. B. Yeats, Evelyn Waugh and Eugene Ionesco. These scholarly investigations are original, illuminating, and often delightful.

For the writers and artists in In-Between Identities: Signs of Islam in Contemporary American Writing, contemporary Muslim American identity is neither singular nor fixed. Rather than dismiss the tradition in favor of more secular approaches, however, all of the figures here discover in Muhammad’s revelation resources for affirming such uncertainty. For them, the Qur’anic notion of a divine “sign” validates creation, even that creativity born of contrasting if not competing assumptions about identity. To develop this claim, individual chapters in the book discuss Muslim faith in the work of poets Naomi Shihab Nye, Kazim Ali, Tyson Amir and Amir Sulaiman; novelists Mohja Kahf, Rabih Alameddine, and Willow Wilson; illustrator Sandow Birk; playwright Ayad Akhtar; and the online record of the 30 Mosques in 30 Days project.

Literary Representations of Christianity in Late Qing and Republican China contributes to the “literary turn” in the study of Chinese Christianity by foregrounding the importance of literary texts, including the major genres of Chinese Christian literature (novels, drama and poetry) of the late Qing and Republican periods. These multifarious types of texts demonstrated the multiple representations and dynamic scenes of Christianity, where Christian imageries and symbolism were transformed by linguistic manipulation into new contextualized forms which nurtured distinctive new fruits of literature and modernized the literary landscape of Chinese literature. The study of the composition and poetics of Chinese Christian literary works helps us rediscover the concerns, priorities, textual strategies of the Christian writers, the cross-cultural challenges involved, and the reception of the Bible.

Scorsese and Religion concerns the religious vision of the great American filmmaker Martin Scorsese. Not only will this volume explore the foundation of Scorsese’s interest in religion—namely, his relation to the Catholic Church—but it will also highlight the religious breadth of Scorsese’s corpus. Ultimately, this book demonstrates that Scorsese’s cinematic “re-presentation” of reality brings together various religious influences (Catholicism, existentialism, Buddhism, etc.) and topics such as violence, morality, nihilism, and so on. The overarching claim is that Scorsese, who indeed once claimed that his “whole life” had been “movies and religion,” cannot be properly understood without reflecting on the ways in which his religious interests are expressed in and through his art.

The Transformations of Tragedy: Christian Influences from Early Modern to Modern explores the influence of Christian theology and culture upon the development of post-classical Western tragedy. The volume is divided into three parts: early modern, modern, and contemporary. This series of essays by established and emergent scholars offers a sustained study of Christianity’s creative influence upon experimental forms of Western tragic drama.Both early modern and modern tragedy emerged within periods of remarkable upheaval in Church history, yet Christianity’s diverse influence upon tragedy has too often been either ignored or denounced by major tragic theorists. This book contends instead that the history of tragedy cannot be sufficiently theorised without fully registering the impact of Christianity in transition towards modernity.

Religious Narratives in Contemporary Culture: Between Cultural Memory and Transmediality analyses the meaning and role of religion in western cultural practices in the twenty-first century. This inquiry situates itself at the intersection between cultural memory studies and the transmedial study of narrative and art. Contributors focus on genres which have yet to receive significant critical attention within the field, including speculative fiction films and television series, autobiographical prose and poetry, and action-adventure video games. In this time of crisis, where traces of religious thinking still persist in the presence or absence of religious faith, this volume’s collective look into some of their cultural embodiments is necessary and timely. The volume is addressed primarily to scholars and students interested in intersections between religious and cultural studies, revisions of traditional religious narratives, literature as a space of reflection on today's world, contemporary media studies and remediation.Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru's editing work in the last stages of this volume was supported by a grant of the Romanian Ministry of Education and Research, CNCS – UEFISCDI, project number PN-III-P3-3.6-H2020-0035.

Have you ever wondered why Cordelia has to die? Or how Alonso talks and walks about the isle while his body lies ‘full fathom five’ on the sea floor? Ever wondered why the monument to Shakespeare in the Church of the Holy Trinity in Stratford-upon-Avon names three pagans: Nestor, Socrates, and Virgil – king, philosopher, and poet? Or why Shakespeare is on Olympus, home of the Greek gods? This interdisciplinary study, the first to interpret the plays of Shakespeare in the light of the esoteric religious doctrines of the Corpus Hermeticum, holds answers to these and other puzzling questions.

What does 'performance' mean in Christian culture? How is it connected to rituals, dramatic and visual arts, and the written word? Performing the Sacred: Christian Representation and the Arts explores both the meaning of re-presentation and the role of performance within the Christian tradition between arts and drama. The essays in this book demonstrate that the idea of performance was central to Christian theology and that—from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern era—it became a device through which people saw, prayed, preached, wrote, imagined, officiated rites, celebrated cults, and practiced devotions. Seen that performance is a habitus within Christianity, performing the sacred does not just mean representing it, but rather enacting it in a tangible, visible and involved way.

There is scant research on the art produced under the Congregation of the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri, with the exception of a couple of general books focused primarily on major Oratorian art pieces. Therefore, this book of essays aims to discuss the art and culture produced by or associated with the Oratorians by providing a broad overview focused especially on rarely investigated issues. The authors focus on this very important artistic production, commonly forgotten when compared with other religious productions of art, by covering geographical areas spanning from Sri Lanka to Mexico, including Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, India and Brazil.

Acknowledgements List of Illustrations Introduction1 Off-Modern Profiles2 Unpacking the Dynamics of Catholic Modernisation3 “The Eclipse of God”: Transplanted Artists4 “Background Metaphorics”: Exchanges between Art and Religion5 Structure of the Book1 Antinomies of Art and Theology. Marie-Alain Couturier and the Contradictions of Modern Sacred CultureIntroduction: Couturier’s Conceptual Zig ZagsPrelude. Paris, 1953. The Contradictoires TextSacred Art between the Mechanical and Natural Attitudes1 Le Saulchoir/Paris, 1918–1930. Catholic Endgame, or the Narrative of Decline1.1 “Down with the Republic, Long Live the King!”: Couturier’s Romantic Anti-Capitalism and the Return to Order (Paris, 1919–1925)1.2 Couturier’s Neo-Thomist Aesthetics (Le Saulchoir, 1925–1930)2 Rome/Paris, 1930–1940. The Gospels and Fraternal Catholic Modernism2.1 The Human Truth of the Gospel (Rome, 1930–1932)2.2 The Art of the Incarnation (Paris, 1935–1937)3 1940–1953. the Secular Prophet. Couturier on Modern Sacred Architecture3.1 The Politics of French Artistic Modernity3.2 Artistic Abstraction and Catholic Humanism3.3 Conflicted Temporalities of Aesthetic Categories in Couturier’s Late Writings3.4 Modesty: a Critical Counter-Concept to Modernity3.5 On the Autonomy of Modern Art and Artists3.6 On the Uses and Abuses of Poverty in the Modern Era2 Between Mysticism and Industry: the Bauhaus Diaspora, the Benedictines and the Ambiguities of Architectural SymbolismIntroduction: Mechanics, Symbols and History1 Navigating the Divide. Breuer and the Benedictines on Architectural Symbolism1.1 Breuer’s Pre-Modern Imaginary1.2 Breuer’s Architectural Symbolism: Tension-Structures1.3 Liturgy and Labour1.4 Benedictine Symbolism, Form, and Function2 Form and Symbolism: The Language of Religious Experience2.1 1959: A Divided Committee2.2 Albers on Form and Tradition2.3 Albers: Spirituality Contra Science2.4 The Public Dimension of SymbolsCoda. Unpacking the Semantics of the “Sacred” in Modern Architecture3 Catholic Metaphorology. Dominique de Menil and the Role of Conversion in Aesthetic EducationIntroduction1 Connecting the Dots Between Paris and Houston 2171.1 Dominique de Menil’s Rothko Chapel Speech, 19711.2 An Intellectual Apprenticeship: Typologies of Engagement1.3 Conceptual Ramifications: from Religion to Aesthetics2 Catholicisme Ondoyant2.1 The Intellectual Context of Congar’s Montmartre Lectures in 19362.2 A Source of Congar’s Pluralism: Thomas Cajetan on the Image2.3 Organic and Embodied Metaphors2.4 The Social Dimension of Catholicism: Yves Congar on Unbelief in 1930s France3 Putting Conversion to Work After World War II3.1 Art Education and Social Justice in the 1960s3.2 From Heritage to Tradition in Dominique de Menil’s Notebooks3.3 The Soil Metaphor3.4 The Fire Metaphor3.5 Dominique de Menil’s Art HistoriographyCoda: A Note on Dominique de Menil’s Catholicism and Mark Rothko’s Abstract Art4 Recast Eyes. Jean Labatut and the Concept of Crisis in Post-World War II Architectural EducationIntroduction: Unpacking Labatut’s Intellectual Framework1 The Language of Experience. Phenomenology, Visuality and Religion in Jean Labatut’s Intellectual Universe1.1 “Architectural Humanism” in the United States after World War II1.2 Labatut’s Visual-Industrial Complex: the Princeton Architectural Laboratory1.3 Historical Consumption1.4 Catholic Conversations: Eidetic Visualisation and Cultural Hylomorphism2 Learning from Labatut. The Divergent Paths of Labatut’s Architectural Programme3 Diversity with Unity. Francis Prokes’s Theological Dimension of Architecture3.1 Choice: Christian Existentialism as a Framework3.2 Involvement: The Theological Grounds of Interdisciplinarity3.3 Purpose: Theology and Architectural History4 Visual Historiography. Robert Venturi’s Context in Architectural Composition4.1 Venturi’s Princeton Formation4.2 Venturi’s Theory of Perception: Gestalt4.3 Appropriated ContextsCoda: A Forgotten Path to PostmodernismEpilogue: Disentangling the Semantic Knot Between a Secular Infinite and a Catholic EternalBibliographyIndex