Invisible Conversations

by Lundin, Roger

• ISBN13: 9781602581470
• ISBN10: 1602581479
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-03-30
• Publisher: Baylor Univ Pr

Summary

American literature offers exceptional resources for understanding the complex role religion has played in the life of the culture and in the experience of its people. In recent decades, however, the academic study of that literature has largely treated religion, in the words of a noted scholar, as an "invisible domain." In joining the rich conversations that have enlivened American culture for centuries, "Invisible Conversations" seeks to bring to light the vital role that religion has played in the literature of the United States.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
Religion and American Fiction
Finding a Prose for God: Religion and American Fiction	p. 19
American Literature and/as Spiritual Inquiry	p. 39
Religion and American Poetry
Variety as Religious Experience: The Poetics of the Plain Style	p. 49
Keeping the Metaphors Alive: American Poetry and Transformation	p. 63
Literature, Religion, and the African American Experience
Genres of Redemption: African Americans, the Bible, and Slavery from Lemuel Haynes to Frederick Douglass	p. 69
Balm in Gilead: Memory, Mourning, and Healing in African American Autobiography	p. 83
The Race for Faith: Justice, Mercy, and the Sign of the Cross in African American Literature	p. 101
Forms of Redemption	p. 121
Literature, Religion, and American Public Life
Hamlet without the Prince: The Role of Religion in Postwar Nonfiction	p. 133
"The Only Permanent State"	p. 149
Belief and the Culture of Incredulity
Theology and American Literature
How the Church Became Invisible: A Christian Reading of American Literary Tradition	p. 159
"The Play of the Lord": On the Limits of Critique	p. 187
Notes	p. 195
Index	p. 219
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