Christianity and Literature articles from September 2003

Christianity and Literature archives from September 2003

Faith and language: Walter Hilton, St. Augustine, and poststructural semiotics.
September 22, 2003... Perhaps the greatest difference between the Christian tradition and post-structuralism is that the latter questions the former by declaring that there is no ultimate meaning, transcendental signified, or God the very foundation upon which...

Narratives of hope, fictions of happiness: Samuel Johnson and enlightenment experience.(Critical Essay)
September 22, 2003... Perhaps no writer in the Christian tradition narrated so fervently the promises of hope while registering so bleakly the impossibilities of happiness as did Samuel Johnson. When asked, for example, if man is ever happy, Johnson dogmatically...

First Scrutiny.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... First Scrutiny Pay attention: You constitute a clutter of fear, regret, despair. You are old. Indeed, it is always late. You eat, sleep, and ogle too much--are an odd blend of hog, hibernating...

Instrument of Good Works #59 (St. Benedict).(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... Instrument of Good Works #59 (St. Benedict) My will is good at what it does: insist, persist. I despise it as I hated rocks I used to bust up with a sledge-hammer at the gravel-plant, minimum wage. I loathe...

The flowering cross: suffering, reality, and the Christ motif in Francis Stuart's The Pillar of Cloud and Redemption.(Critical Essay)
September 22, 2003... Mention the name Francis Stuart to anyone interested in literature today and it is likely that words such as "fascist," "Nazi," and "collaborator" will spring instantly to their minds. Stuart's decision to stay in Germany during World War II...

George A. Buttrick and Frederick Buechner: messengers of reconciling laughter.
September 22, 2003... George A. Buttrick, minister of Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in the mid-twentieth century, played a significant role in Frederick Buechner's life. Although the majority of critics do recognize the significance of Buechner's initial...

Winter.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... Winter The cardinal sings. A bright flame of praise warming winter's bare branches. Graham A. Cole is Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He has published poetry in...

The Possession of Paradise: A. S. Byatt's reinscription of Milton.(Critical Essay)
September 22, 2003... A. S. Byatt's Possession: A Romance (1990) is centrally concerned with etiology. The narrative traces the adventures of two present-day literary scholars, Roland and Maud, in their joint quest for the story about the relationship of two...

Nor Are My Ways Your Ways.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... Nor Are My Ways Your Ways In time, all words end Reason goes begging Starving in streets of glory Hungering for righteousness beyond its ken Poor mad scavenger Holy fool Surviving by wits not his own ...

Ideas of the Good: Iris Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea.(Special Feature)(Critical Essay)
September 22, 2003... It is significant that the idea of goodness (and of virtue) has been largely superseded in Western moral philosophy by the idea of rightness, supported perhaps by some conception of sincerity. This is to some extent a natural outcome of the...

Meditating on the Ways I pray.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... Meditating On The Ways I Pray Sometimes my private prayers can dissolve the tracks the Devil left behind. Gregorian chants often do the same thing for me. Occasionally, when I pray my beads, I can...

Praying with Music.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... Praying with Music Making music is one of the ways I pray. I begin with a song my fingers know how to play without me. I focus on other things. Sometimes I think about music as stuff we cannot taste, hold in our hands,...

Women's Poetry and Religion in Victorian England: Jewish Identity and Christian Culture.(Book Review)
September 22, 2003... By Cynthia Scheinberg. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-521-81112-0. Pp. xi + 275. $55.00. Cynthia Scheinberg joins the scholars who demonstrate the benefits of attending to the dynamic between gender and religion as it...

Henry David Thoreau and the Moral Agency of Knowing.(Book Review)
September 22, 2003... By Alfred I. Tauber. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. ISBN 0-520-22527-9 (cloth), 0-520-23915-6 (paper). Pp. xi + 317. $50.00 (cloth), $24.95 (paper). How we regard Nature, the aspect of Being that exists independent of...

Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy.(Book Review)
September 22, 2003... By Susan Neiman. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-691-09608-2. Pp. xii + 358. $29.95. In the wake of 11 September 2001, the philosopher Susan Neiman cogently constructs a new formulation of the history of modern...

Robert Frost: The Ethics of Ambiguity.(Book Review)
September 22, 2003... By John H. Timmerman. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-8387-5532-1. Pp. 198. $39.50. Worrying poets for their ethical convictions can be a full-time business, even if that activity in the era of post-postmodernity seems...

The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage.(Book Review)
September 22, 2003... By Paul Elie. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003. ISBN 0-374-25680-2. Pp. xiv + 555. $27.00. Like Geoffrey Chaucer and Dante Alighieri before him, Patti Elie has taken pilgrimage as a theme and structure for a literary work. Elie's...

Truth and Reconciliation: The Confessional Mode in South African Literature.(Book Review)
September 22, 2003... Susan VanZanten Gallagher. Portsmouth (NH): Heinemann, 2002. ISBN 0-325-07064-4. Pp. xxi + 206. $64.95. Susan VanZanten Gallagher's earlier book, A Study of South Africa: J. M. Coetzee's Fiction in Context (1991), was a fine study of a...

A little night music.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... A Little Night Music The branches of my seven spruce overlap motionless. The quiet air catches my breath like Delftware: no wind, no planes, even our house wren is still. It's as if the world around me at the...

CCL election results.(News And Announcements)
September 22, 2003... Based upon a plurality of mail ballots cast this fall, the following candidates have been elected to CCL office with terms indicated in parentheses: President--John D. Cox (2004-05); Director at Large--James P. Dougherty (2004-06); Northeast...

C. S. Lewis and Inklings Conference.(News And Announcements)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2003... The Seventh Annual Conference on C. S. Lewis and the Inklings will be held at LeTourneau University on 1-3 April 2004. Focusing on the topic "Mere Christians, Then and Now;' the symposium will include Bruce Edwards (Bowling Green State...

Fiction Award.(News And Announcements)
September 22, 2003... The Paraclete Fiction Award will be conferrred at Calvin College's Festival of Faith and Writing, scheduled for 22-24 April 2004, by contest judge Leif Enger for a novel with Christian themes by a new or emerging author. The winner will receive...

Conference on scripture and the disciplines.(News And Announcements)(Brief Article)
September 22, 2003... On 24-27 May 2004 a conference on "Setting a New Agenda: The Bible in Dialogue with the Academy" will be held on the campus of Wheaton College in Illinois. Featuring six plenary speakers as well as notable scholars in biblical and theological...

Atlantic World Conference.(News And Announcements)
September 22, 2003... Submissions are invited for "Creating Identity and Empire in the Atlantic World, 1492-1888," an interdisciplinary conference on 17-18 September 2004 at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Featured speakers will include Ira Berlin...

The almighty of days.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... The Almighty of Days The World explodes inside a single cell. Tell me how to find you out, Earthmaker, shaper of the strange heaven and odd earth, Birthmaker, founder of the stuff that waits latent and willowy beside...