In this article I consider the bearing of theology on Samuel Beckett’s work in terms of what he called ‘the shape’ of the idea. At the heart of Beckett’s negative aesthetic program is the relation of art to truth. The Beckettian subject and object are the remnants of a denarration that foregrounds the pains his narrators endure on their quest for aseity or inexistence. The narrative struggle to tell a story that cannot be told without falsifying it entails a relation to the absolute centring on the experience of incomprehensibility and pain. In Beckett, God can no more come to expression than the self, making the connection between the two impossibilities all but inescapable.
{"title":"God Bothering Beckett","authors":"C. Conti","doi":"10.1093/litthe/fraa034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/fraa034","url":null,"abstract":"In this article I consider the bearing of theology on Samuel Beckett’s work in terms of what he called ‘the shape’ of the idea. At the heart of Beckett’s negative aesthetic program is the relation of art to truth. The Beckettian subject and object are the remnants of a denarration that foregrounds the pains his narrators endure on their quest for aseity or inexistence. The narrative struggle to tell a story that cannot be told without falsifying it entails a relation to the absolute centring on the experience of incomprehensibility and pain. In Beckett, God can no more come to expression than the self, making the connection between the two impossibilities all but inescapable.","PeriodicalId":43172,"journal":{"name":"Literature and Theology","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85726397","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
If Virgil’s damnation motivates Dante in the heaven of Jupiter to interrogate the inner workings of divine justice, the ultimate theological point in contention is the nature of predestination. This article offers Augustine as an unconsidered textual anchor and hermeneutic lens for illuminating predestination in the Commedia: a doctrine concerning not so much humanity’s attempt at impossible comprehension of God’s salvific will, as an invitation to creative participation in it, realized in and through ongoing, historical practices of caritas conforming the self to the body of Christ.
{"title":"Predestination in Dante’s Commedia in Light of Augustine","authors":"T. Graff","doi":"10.1093/litthe/fraa033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/fraa033","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 If Virgil’s damnation motivates Dante in the heaven of Jupiter to interrogate the inner workings of divine justice, the ultimate theological point in contention is the nature of predestination. This article offers Augustine as an unconsidered textual anchor and hermeneutic lens for illuminating predestination in the Commedia: a doctrine concerning not so much humanity’s attempt at impossible comprehension of God’s salvific will, as an invitation to creative participation in it, realized in and through ongoing, historical practices of caritas conforming the self to the body of Christ.","PeriodicalId":43172,"journal":{"name":"Literature and Theology","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80414350","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World. By Catherine Nixey","authors":"Kostas Boyiopoulos","doi":"10.1093/LITTHE/FRAA014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/LITTHE/FRAA014","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43172,"journal":{"name":"Literature and Theology","volume":"73 1","pages":"510-511"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84315849","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article attends to the ways in which Canadian Mennonite novelist Miriam Toews’ Women Talking crafts a feminist theological parable of women envoicing and incarnating pacifism in the context of a purportedly pacifist colony devastated by patriarchal violence. I argue that the novel, like the biblical parables, functions as a ‘mythos (a heuristic fiction) which has the mimetic power of “redescribing” [pained] human existence’ in reparative terms (Ricoeur). More particularly, as a feminist theological parable, the novel displays in literary form what Luce Irigaray philosophically conceives of as ‘becoming divine women’. I first explore definitions of biblical parables and divine becomings, prior to turning my attention to the Bolivian crisis, and then to Toews’ hopeful, revisionist narrative.
{"title":"Becoming Divine Women: Miriam Toews’ Women Talking as Parable1","authors":"Grace Kehler","doi":"10.1093/litthe/fraa020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/fraa020","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article attends to the ways in which Canadian Mennonite novelist Miriam Toews’ Women Talking crafts a feminist theological parable of women envoicing and incarnating pacifism in the context of a purportedly pacifist colony devastated by patriarchal violence. I argue that the novel, like the biblical parables, functions as a ‘mythos (a heuristic fiction) which has the mimetic power of “redescribing” [pained] human existence’ in reparative terms (Ricoeur). More particularly, as a feminist theological parable, the novel displays in literary form what Luce Irigaray philosophically conceives of as ‘becoming divine women’. I first explore definitions of biblical parables and divine becomings, prior to turning my attention to the Bolivian crisis, and then to Toews’ hopeful, revisionist narrative.","PeriodicalId":43172,"journal":{"name":"Literature and Theology","volume":"402 1","pages":"408-429"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86832415","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article analyses Stephen Mitchell’s interpretation of the Taoist classic Tao Te Ching. With his adoption of the concepts from Zen Buddhism and his borrowing of ideas from Christianity, Mitchell’s version of the Tao Te Ching is not a scholarly faithful translation but rather a spiritual interpretation that is heavily improvised. The importance of this spiritual interpretation lies in the way Mitchell fuses the horizon of Chinese Taoism with his own Zen practice and the English-speaking reader's horizon of Christianity. However, this contribution is offset by the limitation of Mitchell’s work. His version of the Tao Te Ching risks estranging itself from the sociocultural context of the Chinese original, misleading English-speaking readers, and displacing Taoist thought with Buddhist and Christian teachings.
{"title":"Stephen Mitchell’s Version of the Tao Te Ching: A Spiritual Interpretation","authors":"Penghua Fan, Senlin Yu","doi":"10.1093/litthe/fraa023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/fraa023","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article analyses Stephen Mitchell’s interpretation of the Taoist classic Tao Te Ching. With his adoption of the concepts from Zen Buddhism and his borrowing of ideas from Christianity, Mitchell’s version of the Tao Te Ching is not a scholarly faithful translation but rather a spiritual interpretation that is heavily improvised. The importance of this spiritual interpretation lies in the way Mitchell fuses the horizon of Chinese Taoism with his own Zen practice and the English-speaking reader's horizon of Christianity. However, this contribution is offset by the limitation of Mitchell’s work. His version of the Tao Te Ching risks estranging itself from the sociocultural context of the Chinese original, misleading English-speaking readers, and displacing Taoist thought with Buddhist and Christian teachings.","PeriodicalId":43172,"journal":{"name":"Literature and Theology","volume":"37 1","pages":"486-493"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91159318","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines the origin and early development of the Bible as literature in China in the second and third decades of the 20th century, as represented by the works of the single most influential literary critic in this regard, Zhu Weizhi. It argues that the rise of the Bible as literature in China since its inception is best understood as a repressed religious modernity among the multiple forms of Chinese literary modernity. The case study of Zhu Weizhi in the first decade of his literary-critical life (1925–35) may enrich our understanding of both the globalisation of the literary readings of the Bible in the 20th century and the complex, underrepresented, entanglements of religion and literature in modern China.
{"title":"Repressed Religious Modernity: Zhu Weizhi and the Rise of the Bible as Literature in Modern China, 1925–35","authors":"Zhixi Wang","doi":"10.1093/litthe/fraa016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/fraa016","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article examines the origin and early development of the Bible as literature in China in the second and third decades of the 20th century, as represented by the works of the single most influential literary critic in this regard, Zhu Weizhi. It argues that the rise of the Bible as literature in China since its inception is best understood as a repressed religious modernity among the multiple forms of Chinese literary modernity. The case study of Zhu Weizhi in the first decade of his literary-critical life (1925–35) may enrich our understanding of both the globalisation of the literary readings of the Bible in the 20th century and the complex, underrepresented, entanglements of religion and literature in modern China.","PeriodicalId":43172,"journal":{"name":"Literature and Theology","volume":"73 1","pages":"430-449"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79602675","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Inconspicuous God: Heidegger, French Phenomenology, & the Theological Turn. By Jason W. Alvis","authors":"Daniel Boscaljon","doi":"10.1093/litthe/fraa019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/fraa019","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43172,"journal":{"name":"Literature and Theology","volume":"10 1","pages":"513-516"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81905858","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Hermann Hesse was keenly aware of the spiritual and social crises of war-torn Europe. He explored possible solutions to these problems in his writing and was interested in drawing on the resources of oriental philosophies. Of particular importance was the thought of Chinese Taoism. Hesse frequently mentioned his understanding of the Taoist philosophies of Laozi (老子) and Zhuangzi (庄子) in letters to his friends, and Taoist ideas such as ‘Tao’ (道) or ‘One’ and ‘polar opposites and unity’ recur across his work. This article will trace Hesse’s understanding of the Taoist thought of Laozi and Zhuangzi, and analyse the influence of Chinese Taoism on Hesse’s masterpiece, The Glass Bead Game (1943).
{"title":"The Opposites and Unity: A Study of Chinese Taoist Thought Found in Hermann Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game","authors":"Xianyun Tang, Boren Zheng","doi":"10.1093/litthe/fraa022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/fraa022","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Hermann Hesse was keenly aware of the spiritual and social crises of war-torn Europe. He explored possible solutions to these problems in his writing and was interested in drawing on the resources of oriental philosophies. Of particular importance was the thought of Chinese Taoism. Hesse frequently mentioned his understanding of the Taoist philosophies of Laozi (老子) and Zhuangzi (庄子) in letters to his friends, and Taoist ideas such as ‘Tao’ (道) or ‘One’ and ‘polar opposites and unity’ recur across his work. This article will trace Hesse’s understanding of the Taoist thought of Laozi and Zhuangzi, and analyse the influence of Chinese Taoism on Hesse’s masterpiece, The Glass Bead Game (1943).","PeriodicalId":43172,"journal":{"name":"Literature and Theology","volume":"36 1","pages":"503-509"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85924566","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article argues that both Zhuangzi and Nietzsche’s aestheticism is a means of overcoming their tragic vision of life. Nietzsche’s aesthetic state of Dionysian intoxication and Zhuangzi’s floating/wandering (游) involve similar, rapturous self-loss in merging with a primal unity or ground being of existence. Both seek an aestheticised, spiritual freedom that is built on an alienation from their perceived reality. Both versions of aestheticism have their price: the penalty of Zagreus in Dionysus, and the sacrifice of historical time and historical self in Zhuangzi’s thought. Beneath their aestheticised vision of primal unity, both are torn by tragic conflicts and sacrifice. Of Zhuangzi, we could say the same as Nietzsche said of the Greeks in his The Birth of Tragedy: ‘this is the real meaning of the famous Greek serenity, so often misrepresented as some kind of untroubled cheerfulness’.
{"title":"A Comparative Study of Zhuangzi and Nietzsche’s Tragic Vision and Aestheticism","authors":"Hong Zeng, William Harmon","doi":"10.1093/litthe/fraa021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/fraa021","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article argues that both Zhuangzi and Nietzsche’s aestheticism is a means of overcoming their tragic vision of life. Nietzsche’s aesthetic state of Dionysian intoxication and Zhuangzi’s floating/wandering (游) involve similar, rapturous self-loss in merging with a primal unity or ground being of existence. Both seek an aestheticised, spiritual freedom that is built on an alienation from their perceived reality. Both versions of aestheticism have their price: the penalty of Zagreus in Dionysus, and the sacrifice of historical time and historical self in Zhuangzi’s thought. Beneath their aestheticised vision of primal unity, both are torn by tragic conflicts and sacrifice. Of Zhuangzi, we could say the same as Nietzsche said of the Greeks in his The Birth of Tragedy: ‘this is the real meaning of the famous Greek serenity, so often misrepresented as some kind of untroubled cheerfulness’.","PeriodicalId":43172,"journal":{"name":"Literature and Theology","volume":"43 1","pages":"467-476"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80923958","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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