Scandalizing Jesus? Kazantzakis's The Last Temptation of Christ Fifty Years On

by Middleton, Darren J. N.

• ISBN13: 9780826416070
• ISBN10: 0826416071
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-11-03
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

2005 marks the fiftieth anniversary of Nikos Kazantzakis's The Last Temptation of Christ. Since Kazantzakis ranks as one of the twentieth century's most important European writers, and given that this particular work of his has garnered so much publicity, this collection of essays re-assesses the novel, though nor forgetting the movie, in light of one half century's worth of criticism and reception history. Clergy and laity alike have denounced this novel. When it first appeared, the Greek Orthodox Church condemned it, the Vatican placed it on its index of Forbidden Texts, and conservative-evangelicals around the world protested its allegedly blasphemous portrayal of a human, struggling Messiah who 'succumbs" to the devil's final snare while on the Cross: the temptation to happiness. When Martin Scorcese decided in the early 1980s to adapt the novel for teh silver screen, even stronger feelings were exposed. Even today his works are seldom studied in Greece, largely because the Greek government is unable or unwilling to anthologize his material for the national curriculum. After fifty years, however, the time seems right to re-examine the novel, the man, and the film, locating Kazantzakis and his work within an important debate about the relationship between religion and art. The volume contains original essays by Martin Scorsese, the film critic Peter Chattaway, and Kazantzakis's translator, Peter A. Bien.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Note on Titles	p. xiii
Introduction: Literary Lord, Screen Savior	p. xv
Literary Lord
Renan's Vie de Jesus as a Primary Source for The Last Temptation	p. 3
The Novel, the Four Gospels, and the Continuing Historical Quest	p. 19
Pontius Pilate: Modern Man in Search of a Soul	p. 35
Kazantzakis, Chalcedonian Orthodoxy, and Monophysitism	p. 47
Reading Kazantzakis through Gregory of Nyssa: Some Common Anthropological Themes	p. 61
The Unreality of Repressed Desires in The Last Temptation	p. 73
The Temptation That Never Was: Kazantzakis and Borges	p. 85
"This Clay Bird Is the Soul of Man": A Platonic Reading of Kazantzakis's The Last Temptation	p. 97
In the Name-of-the-Father: The Semiotic Threat over the Symbolic Logos	p. 111
An Unholy Trinity: Women in Pre-Easter Patriarchy	p. 125
Distant Flutter of a Butterfly: The Indian Response to The Last Temptation	p. 135
Screen Savior
Satan and the Curious: Texas Evangelicals Read The Last Temptation of Christ	p. 147
Battling the Flesh: Sexuality and Spirituality in The Last Temptation of Christ	p. 157
Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ: A Critical Reassessment of Its Sources, Its Theological Problems, and Its Impact on the Public	p. 173
Teaching the Temptation: Seminarians Viewing The Last Temptation of Christ	p. 193
The Dual Substance of Cinema: What Kazantzakis's Christ Can Teach Us about Sound/Image Relationship in Film	p. 203
Identity and Ethnicity in Peter Gabriel's Sound Track for The Last Temptation of Christ	p. 217
On Reappreciating Kazantzakis	p. 229
Webliography	p. 231
For Further Reading	p. 237
Contributors	p. 245
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