Theology and Literature Rethinking Reader Responsibility

by Joseph, Clara A.B.; Ortiz, Gaye Williams

• ISBN13: 9781403971982
• ISBN10: 1403971986
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-05-13
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This collection of new essays by academics from different parts of the world brings refreshing and provocative responses to prominent literary theories, especially theories of the reading process and of reader-response. This edition is significant in three ways: for its encounter with world religions and literatures; its explicit literary cum theological discourse; and its strong focus on the ethics of reading and representation. It boasts an impressive multidisciplinary array of reader-response theories that straddle theological, cultural, and literary boundaries. The essays showcase a combination of theory and hands-on application on literary and cultural texts.

Author Biography

Gaye Williams Ortiz is Professor of Communication Studies, Augusta State University. Clara A.B. Joseph is Assistant Professor in the Department of English, University of Calgary, Canada.

Table of Contents

On Reader Responsibility: An Introduction--Clara A.B. Joseph and Gaye Williams Ortiz * A Theory of Ethical Reading * Some Dilemmas of an Ethics of Literature--Liesbeth Korthals Altes * Reading and the Biblical * Only Irresponsible People Would Go into the Desert for Forty Days: Jim Crace's Quarantine or The Diary of Another Madman--David Jasper * The Ethics of Biblical Interpretation: Rhetoricizing the Foundations--Robert J. Hurley * Samuel Beckett's Use of the Bible and the Resposibility of the Reader--Spyridoula Athanasopoulou-Kypriou * On Trial: Mikhail Bakhtin and Abram Tertz's Address to 'God'--Lewis Owens * Bible and Ethics: Moral Formation and Analogical Imagination--Johannes Nissen * Reading and the Literary * The Playwright, the Novelist, and the Comedian: A Case Study in Audience Responsibility--Dirk Visser * Dialogue in Gandhi's Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule or the Reader as Truth-Seeker--Clara A.B. Joseph * Responsibly Performing Vulnerability: Salman Rushdie's Fury and Edgar Laurence Doctorow's City of God--Erik Borgman * The "Indian" Character of Modern Hindi Drama: Neo-Sanskritic, Pro-Western Naturalistic, or Natavistic Dramas?--Diana Dimitrova * Apocryphal Imitation of the Feminine--Judith of Bethulia--Elizabeth Philpot * Revolting Fantasies: Reviewing the Cinematic Image as Fruitful Ground for Creative Theological Interpretations in the Company of Julia Kristeva--Alison Jasper * Literature as Resistance: Hannah Arendt on Storytelling--Dirk De Schutter

On Reader Responsibility: An Introduction--Clara A.B. Joseph and Gaye Williams Ortiz * A Theory of Ethical Reading * Some Dilemmas of an Ethics of Literature--Liesbeth Korthals Altes * Reading and the Biblical * Only Irresponsible People Would Go into the Desert for Forty Days: Jim Crace's Quarantine or The Diary of Another Madman--David Jasper * The Ethics of Biblical Interpretation: Rhetoricizing the Foundations--Robert J. Hurley * Samuel Beckett's Use of the Bible and the Resposibility of the Reader--Spyridoula Athanasopoulou-Kypriou * On Trial: Mikhail Bakhtin and Abram Tertz's Address to 'God'--Lewis Owens * Bible and Ethics: Moral Formation and Analogical Imagination--Johannes Nissen * Reading and the Literary * The Playwright, the Novelist, and the Comedian: A Case Study in Audience Responsibility--Dirk Visser * Dialogue in Gandhi's Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule or the Reader as Truth-Seeker--Clara A.B. Joseph * Responsibly Performing Vulnerability: Salman Rushdie's Fury and Edgar Laurence Doctorow's City of God--Erik Borgman * The "Indian" Character of Modern Hindi Drama: Neo-Sanskritic, Pro-Western Naturalistic, or Natavistic Dramas?--Diana Dimitrova * Apocryphal Imitation of the Feminine--Judith of Bethulia--Elizabeth Philpot * Revolting Fantasies: Reviewing the Cinematic Image as Fruitful Ground for Creative Theological Interpretations in the Company of Julia Kristeva--Alison Jasper * Literature as Resistance: Hannah Arendt on Storytelling--Dirk De Schutter