| Secular Scriptures: Modern Theological Poetics in the Wake of Dante Contributor(s): Franke, William (Author) |
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ISBN: 0814251978 ISBN-13: 9780814251973 Publisher: Ohio State University Press OUR PRICE: $26.68 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: November 2016 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | American - General - Literary Criticism | European - French - Literary Criticism | European - Italian |
| Dewey: 809.193 |
| LCCN: 2015026216 |
| Series: Literature, Religion, & Postsecular Stud |
| Physical Information: 0.61" H x 6" W x 9" (0.88 lbs) 270 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - British Isles - Cultural Region - Italy - Cultural Region - French |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: With Secular Scriptures: Modern Theological Poetics in the Wake of Dante, William Franke reexamines the role that literature plays in theological revelation. In the modern world, secularism typically means the exclusion of God from the world. Yet Franke, recognizing that secularity itself is built into religion and revelation, argues that theologically sensitive poetry has driven secularization throughout the modern period. The essays in this volume construct a trajectory through modern poetic literature as it struggled with the sense of a loss of the very possibility of theological revelation. Can literature replace religion? Can it do so triumphantly or only mournfully? Is this literary transmogrification of revelation the death of religion or its rebirth in a vital new form? Secular Scriptures examines, through its own original speculative outlook, some of the most compelling exemplars of religious-poetic revelation in modern Western literature. The essays taken as an ensemble revolve around and are bookended by Dante, but they also explore the work of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, Leopardi, Baudelaire, Dickinson, and Yeats. Looking both backward and forward from the vantage of Dante, Franke explores the roots of secularized religious vision in antiquity and the Middle Ages, even as he also looks forward toward its fruits in modern poetry and poetics. Ultimately, Franke's analyses demonstrate the possibilities opened by understanding literature as secularized religious revelation. |