The Force of Tradition Response and Resistance in Literature, Religion, and Cultural Studies

by Marshall, Donald G.; Bruns, Gerald L.; Cullen, Margaret; Felch, Susan; Jacobs, Alan; Landrum, David; Later, Genevieve; Lillegard, Norman; McVeigh, Daniel; Schnell, Michael; Slaymaker, William; Weele, Michael Vander; Weinsheimer, Joel

• ISBN13: 9780742541627
• ISBN10: 0742541622
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-08-25
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Summary

How do we stand in relation to everything that comes down to us from the past? Is the very idea of tradition still useful in the wake of historical ruptures, such as the Holocaust, changes in the canon, and the end of colonialism? Drawing on a wide range of philosophers and literary theorists, these thirteen essays examine the response and resistance to religious, cultural, and literary tradition by various American, English, German, and African writers. Contributors analyze suspicion of tradition in modernity and present more complex and nuanced accounts of tradition that demonstrate its legitimacy and necessity in the lives of individuals and communities. Tradition emerges from their accounts both as a critique of destructive aspects of modernity and as consistent with some of its central values. Visit our website for sample chapters!

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(212)
Donald G. Marshall
1 Tradition and the Terror of History: Christianity, the Holocaust, and the Jewish Theological Dilemma	19	(20)
Gerald L. Bruns
2 Charity Militant: Gadamer, Davidson, and Postcritical Hermeneutics	39	(16)
Joel Weinsheimer
3 "In the Chorus of Others": M.M. Bakhtin's Sense of Tradition	55	(24)
Susan M. Felch
4 The Role of the Kuhnian Paradigm in Tradition and Originality	79	(20)
Genevieve Later
5 Walking vs. Flying: Kierkegaard on Tradition and the Moral Import of Literature	99	(28)
Norman Lillegard
6 My Own Private New England: Tradition, the Self, and the State in Cotton Mather's The Wonders of the Invisible World	127	(16)
Michael Schnell
7 Holy Fire: Biblical Radicalism in the Narratives of Jarena Lee and Zilpha Elaw	143	(22)
Margaret Cullen
8 ESTESE and Doblado: Coleridge, Blanco White, and the Church of Rome	165	(20)
Daniel McVeigh
9 Jane Eyre and the Tradition of Self-Assertion; or, Bronte's Socialization of Schiller's "Play Aesthetic"	185	(28)
Michael Vander Weele
10 Tradition and Liberation: A Critique of German Cultural Modernity in Heinrich Boll and Hans-Georg Gadamer	213	(24)
William Slaymaker
11 Community, Text, and Tradition in The French Lieutenant's Woman	237	(18)
David Landrum
12 Storytellers and Interpreters in Achebe	255	(14)
Alan Jacobs
About the Contributors	269

Excerpts

"How do we stand in relation to everything that comes down to us from the past? Is the very idea of tradition still useful in the wake of historical ruptures such as the Holocaust, changes in the canon, and the end of colonialism? Suspicion of tradition as culturally narrow and oppressive is a persistent theme of modernity and has increased with the resurgence of religious traditionalism around the globe. At the same time, various groups demanding recognition for their distinctive cultural identity have reclaimed their traditions." "The essays in this volume offer analyses of religious, literary, and cultural traditions and both responses and resistance to them including works by Hans-Georg Gadamer, Josiah Rayes, Alasdair MacIntyre, Jacques Derrida, Charlotte Bronte, Soren Kierkegaard, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Edith Wharton, Chinua Achebe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Kuhn, Donald Davidson, antebellum, African-American women preachers, and Christian and Jewish thinkers in the wake of the Holocaust, among others."--BOOK JACKET.