Abstract
Literature and religion have often been neighboring rivals, each offering multiple dimensions of meaning to experience. Each also has been traditionally defined in terms of a governing unity. But post-metaphysical critique has challenged the overarching reference to unity in favor of a recognition and embrace of difference. Taking the history of American poetics, this chapter pursues the implications of the shift from traditional metaphysics of unity through post-metaphysical critiques towards redefining both aesthetic and religious meanings through difference and multiplicity.
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An interesting range of such traditional approaches to the question of literature and religion can be found in the collection of essays edited by Giles Gunn. There, Nathan Scott and Louis Martz offer literature as religious experience; Walter Ong as ontological contact. Anthony Wilder and Vincent Buckley refer literature to doctrine. Ricoeur and Stanley Romaine Hopper offer existential readings. C.S. Lewis and Northrop Frye, not in the collection, envision literature through metaphysical structures.
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Wolosky, S. (2018). Religion and Literature: Exegesis, Hermeneutics, Post-Modern Theories. In: Stocker, B., Mack, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54794-1_30
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54794-1_30
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