{"title":"Compunction and Conversion in Henry James's \"The Altar of the Dead\"","authors":"Ann W. Astell","doi":"10.1353/rel.2021.0035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/rel.2021.0035","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:In \"The Altar of the Dead\" (1895), the compunction of Henry James's hero, George Stransom, is a grace of conversion (in Girardian terms, of \"novelistic conversion\") with real-life consequences for James himself, a writer then still locked in an obsessive, mimetic relationship with Oscar Wilde (1854−1900), his chief authorial rival. The ever ambivalent relationship between James and Wilde has been noted and traced in many of their respective writings, but \"The Altar of the Dead\" has been neglected in this regard, due to the uncanny tale's putative memorial connection to James's friend, the writer Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840–1894). Taken alone, however, that connection cannot account for elements in the tale that surprised James himself, ranging outside of his narrative control. Composed in the autumn of 1894 and published in 1895, the year of James's public humiliation as a playwright and of Wilde's imprisonment, the tale marks a definite turning point both in James's authorial career and in his personal relationships. Interpreted within the biographical context of its composition, James's tale of fraternal strife, jealousy, and religious cult exemplifies key elements in René Girard's mimetic theory. Through its evocation of the ancient doctrine of compunction, \"The Altar of the Dead\" also helps to fill a lacuna in Girard's work, which under-theorizes the work of grace. Unlike James's other ghostly stories, \"The Altar of the Dead\" remembers a moral miracle and a saintly intervention from beyond the grave amid a mimetic crisis that was more than fictional for Henry James.","PeriodicalId":43443,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION & LITERATURE","volume":"25 1","pages":"121 - 99"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75110631","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":"Fault Lines of Modernity: The Fractures and Repairs of Religion, Ethics, and Literature ed. by Kitty Millet and Dorothy Figueira (review)","authors":"C. Woelfel","doi":"10.5040/9781501316678","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5040/9781501316678","url":null,"abstract":"nostalgia to reveal the overdetermined meanings of the texts she discusses as well as the prooftexts on which those texts rely, and the way those meanings were manipulated by writers and intellectuals to reconstruct a particular image of the Jewish past for American Jews building a post-Holocaust Jewish identity. Despite the minor organizational flaw that the book lacks subheadings for its very long, multilayered chapters, this volume is an essential contribution not only to the field of literary studies, but also to the study of postwar American Jewish life and culture, as well as the role of mediated texts in the creation of folk ethnographies.","PeriodicalId":43443,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION & LITERATURE","volume":"24 1","pages":"164 - 166"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77846682","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":"Ted Hughes and the Biological Fall","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/rel.2018.0021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/rel.2018.0021","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The British poet Ted Hughes offers an undeniably religious vision of the world, combining devotion to a Robert Graves-style goddess figure with an enduring fascination with Christian cosmology and biblical stories. He pursues science, particularly anthropology and palaeontology, with equal interest. These interests intersect in an essay Hughes wrote, ostensibly about William Golding’s novel The Inheritors, in which he attempts to unite a lapsarian reading of the human condition with the (at the time) latest scientific developments concerning human evolution. Taking Hughes’s article as a starting point, I explore the ways in which this lapsarian-evolutionary perspective on humanity informs Hughes’s own creative output, locating resonant Old Testament passages which appear to underwrite his project and providing a critique of his ideas along both scientific and theological lines.","PeriodicalId":43443,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION & LITERATURE","volume":"52 1","pages":"153 - 176"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87493109","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":"“Ic eom wunderlicu wiht”: Discovering Creation as Sacrament in the Exeter Book Riddles","authors":"R. Kessler","doi":"10.1353/rel.2019.0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/rel.2019.0016","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical invites readers to combat the impending threat of human-caused climate change by reclaiming a sense of the sacramentality of creation. While Francis cites influential Christian figures such as Bonaventure and John of the Cross, the Old English riddles of the Exeter Book provide an unexpected source for such spiritual illumination. The playful depiction of everyday objects in the dramatic structure of the riddles invites the reader to engage with a sense of God as creator and the wondrous character of God’s creation. Cultivating an appreciation of the divine presence in the world of the Exeter Book riddles challenges the reader to break down the distinction between “sacred” and “secular” and to subsequently view the natural world as worthy of stewardship.","PeriodicalId":43443,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION & LITERATURE","volume":"30 1","pages":"185 - 193"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90659450","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":"Death Be Not Proud: The Art of Holy Attention by David Mamo (review)","authors":"Elizabeth Hodgson","doi":"10.1353/rel.2019.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/rel.2019.0011","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43443,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION & LITERATURE","volume":"59 1","pages":"207 - 209"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78864674","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":"Continuing Bonds with the Dead: Parental Grief and Nineteenth-Century American Authors by Harold K. Bush (review)","authors":"J. C. Reesman","doi":"10.1353/rel.2019.0037","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/rel.2019.0037","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43443,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION & LITERATURE","volume":"24 1","pages":"126 - 128"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86356581","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":"Sin and Salvation: Marita Bonner’s Early Explorations of Christian Theology","authors":"M. West","doi":"10.1353/rel.2019.0066","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/rel.2019.0066","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:“Sin and Salvation: Marita Bonner’s Early Explorations of Christian Theology” explores three of the author’s overlooked writings—a short story and two essays—to establish their theological underpinnings and the ways in which they engage larger cultural debates about religion in the Harlem Renaissance. West situates Bonner’s writings within the swirling and evolving discourses of orthodox Calvinism, progressive orthodoxy and Social Gospel theology that dominated New England Protestantism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Doing so establishes the contexts for Bonner’s repeated invocations of theological rhetoric and her use of literary traditions rarely, if ever, linked to the Harlem Renaissance. While existing scholarship links Bonner to Old Testament vengeance, these three texts far better reflect Bonner’s understanding of the New Testament. When read from a theological perspective, Bonner’s 1925 short story “The Hands—A Story” takes on an allegorical character and participates in the homiletic tradition. In “The Young Blood Hungers” (1928) Bonner gently advocates for progressive orthodoxy. Finally, Bonner explores the intersections of race, racism, and theology in her 1927 essay “—And I Passed By,” which remains frequently overlooked in bibliographies of her work. This pseudonymous essay functions both autobiographically and allegorically as a contribution to the tradition of homiletic narrative and the Social Gospel. While scholars have long acknowledged Bonner’s pervasive use of religion, West’s essay uncovers the roots of Bonner’s references and establishes an important foundation for future explorations of religion in her work.","PeriodicalId":43443,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION & LITERATURE","volume":"334 1","pages":"100 - 77"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79732113","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":"Elf Queens and Holy Friars: Fairy Beliefs and the Medieval Church by Richard Firth Green (review)","authors":"Richard P. Fahey","doi":"10.1353/rel.2019.0049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/rel.2019.0049","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43443,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION & LITERATURE","volume":"21 1","pages":"253 - 256"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84187516","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":"Third-Generation Holocaust Representation: Trauma, History, and Memory by Victoria Aarons, Alan L. Berger (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/rel.2018.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/rel.2018.0007","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43443,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION & LITERATURE","volume":"179 2 1","pages":"215 - 217"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78153662","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":"Milton and the Burden of Freedom by Warren Chernaik (review)","authors":"Claire Falck","doi":"10.1353/rel.2019.0050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/rel.2019.0050","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43443,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION & LITERATURE","volume":"7 1","pages":"259 - 261"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88248235","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}