Christianity and Literature articles from January 2008

Christianity and Literature archives from January 2008

Wild writing: holy stigmata and the aesthetics of "sacred pain" in Ron Hansen's Mariette in ecstasy.(Critical essay)
January 1, 2008... Imagine, if you will, a photographic representation of the twentieth-century stigmatic Therese Neumann. Cataracts of blood gush from her eyes, carving dark trails of viscous liquid down her cheeks. Her white nun's habit is bespattered with...

Biblical analogy and secondary allegory in Chaucer's The Knight's Tale.(Critical essay)
January 1, 2008... For a number of years, at least two major strains of interpretation of The Knight's Tale have had this much in common, that they have viewed the tale as capturing a world fully pagan. Their analyses with respect to this reading have led to two...

Love's Humbling.(Poem)
January 1, 2008... The medieval mystic, Mechthild of Magdeburg, addressing the Cistercian sisters at Helffa, 1280 Love's Humbling I knew Him first as playmate, before I was His bride, Flirting as two lovers, until my soul would swoon. ...

House-building and house-holding at Walden.(Walden Pond)(Critical essay)
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Like many people who have done their own carpentry, Henry David Thoreau was ready to say that he had built his own house at Walden. Just after he gave up his Walden life and returned to town, he told a Harvard...

Floreate Edge.(Poem)
January 1, 2008... Floreate Edge December, the buds on the blossom trees drawn by heat, coaxed into exposure confuse the branch, the soft pods closed on pale folds. They are the size of nuts that will be pried and broken open. ...

Thoughts on the Afterlife.(Poem)
January 1, 2008... Thoughts on the Afterlife Driving home Friday I pass a man mowing the grass in front of a small blue house just north of the mortuary-- a dead ringer for my dead colleague, David, professor and former...

The problem of violence against the other in twentieth-century apocalyptic fiction.(Critical essay)
January 1, 2008... Major twentieth-century fiction writers employ the traditional pattern of a final "holy war" against the other from the book of Revelation but at the same time problematize the use of violence for religious purposes. The central role of the...

From Wyclif to Babel: some first books of poetry.(Book review)
January 1, 2008... Babel's Stair. By Rhoda Janzen. Cincinnati, OH: Word Press, 2006. ISBN 1-933456-52-3. Pp. 124. $17.00. Motherhouse, By Kathleen Jesme. Rock Hill, SC, & Warrensburg, MO: Pleiades Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8071-3044-3. Pp. vi + 98. $18.95. ...

Christian sensibility in our un-Christian age: two approaches to Iris Murdoch's moral depth.(Iris Murdoch: The Retrospective Fiction 2nd Ed; The Moral Vision of Iris Murdoch)(Book review)
January 1, 2008... Iris Murdoch: The Retrospective Fiction. By Brian Nicol. 2nd Ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. ISBN: 1-4039-1665-0 (paper). Pp. xvii + 201. $29.95. The Moral Vision of Iris Murdoch. By Heather Widdows. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005....

2007 Conference on Christianity and Literature awards.(SPECIAL FEATURE)(Conference news)
January 1, 2008... Each year the Conference on Christianity and Literature recognizes literary achievement in the form of awards presented for lifetime achievement, best book in the field, and the Lionel Basney Award for best article published in Christianity and...

The Man Running Naked into the Dark.(Poem)
January 1, 2008... The Man Running Naked into the Dark Mark 14: 51.52. A certain young man was following him, wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him, but he left the linen cloth and ran off naked. Biblical scholars...

Encountering the Sacred: The Debate on Christian Pilgrimage in Late Antiquity.(Book review)
January 1, 2008... Encountering the Sacred: The Debate on Christian Pilgrimage in Late Antiquity. By Brouria Bitton-Asbkelony. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. ISBN 0-520-24191-6. Pp. xvi + 250. $45.00. During the fourth, fifth, and sixth...

Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity.(Book review)
January 1, 2008... Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity. By David Brakke. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-674-01875-3. Pp. ix + 308. $51.50. This vividly readable book has appeal beyond its...

Early American Women Critics: Performance, Religion, Race.(Book review)
January 1, 2008... Early American Women Critics: Performance, Religion, Race. By Gay Gibson Cima. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-521-84733-8. Pp. xi + 241. $85.00. In this ambitious study, Gay Gibson Cima combines performance theory and...

Mark Twain and the Spiritual Crisis of His Age.(Book review)
January 1, 2008... Mark Twain and the Spiritual Crisis of His Age. By Harold K. Bush, Jr. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2007. ISBN-0-8173-1538-1. Pp. 352. $47.50. Early in his marriage, Mark Twain read W. E. H. Lecky's History of European...

Sin and Evil: Moral Values in Literature.(Book review)
January 1, 2008... Sin and Evil: Moral Values in Literature. By Ronald Paulson. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-300-12014-1. Pp. xvi + 403. $42.00. The 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean, Hurricane Katrina, the Holocaust of the...

C. S. Lewis, Collected Letters: Volume III, Narnia, Cambridge and Joy, 1950-1963.(Book review)
January 1, 2008... C. S. Lewis, Collected Letters: Volume III, Narnia, Cambridge and Joy, 1950-1963. Edited by Walter Hooper. London: HarperCollins, 2006. ISBN 10-00-711302-1. Pp. vii + 1,810. $42.95. My earlier reviews in these pages of Walter Hooper's last...

Northrop Frye and the Phenomenology of Myth.(Categorizing Twentieth-Century Film Using Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism: Relating Literature and Film)(Book review)
January 1, 2008... Northrop Frye and the Phenomenology of Myth. By Glen Robert Gill. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. ISBN 0-8020-9404-X. Pp. xvi + 242. $24.95. Categorizing Twentieth-Century Film Using Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism:...

Hermeneutics at the Crossroads.(Book review)
January 1, 2008... Hermeneutics at the Crossroads. Edited by Kevin J. Vanhoozer, James K. A. Smith, and Bruce Ellis Benson. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2006. xviii + 246. $65.00. This collection of twelve essays is another in the valuable series emerging from...

Conferences and calls for submissions.(News and Announcements)
January 1, 2008... The 2008 Southeast Regional CCL Conference will be held April 10-12 at Wingate University, twenty-five miles east of Charlotte, NC. The theme of the conference will be "Christian Humanism in a Postmodern Age" Ralph C. Wood will be the keynote...

"Teaching spiritually engaged reading".(News and Announcements)(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... The Stapleford Centre, Kuyers Institute, and Association of Christian Teachers announce the publication of Teaching Spiritually Engaged Reading, a work designed to investigate how the shape given to the reading experience by educators connects...

CCL PayPal option.(News and Announcements)(Conference on Christianity and Literature)(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... The Conference on Christianity and Literature has recently begun accepting payments to begin or renew memberships online. Payments may be made with a credit card or through a PayPal account. All financial transactions are handled through...