About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherBloomsbury Academic & Professional

ISBN-100826489079

ISBN-139780826489074

eBay Product ID (ePID)60066418

Product Key Features

Number of Pages168 Pages

LanguageEnglish

Publication NameContemporary Fiction and Christianity

Publication Year2008

SubjectSubjects & Themes / Religion, General, American / General, Christianity / Literature & the Arts, European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh

TypeTextbook

Subject AreaLiterary Criticism, Religion

AuthorAndrew Tate

SeriesContinuum Literary Studies

FormatHardcover

Dimensions

Item Height0.4 in

Item Weight14.7 Oz

Item Length9.2 in

Item Width6.1 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceScholarly & Professional

LCCN2008-295297

Reviews"Andrew Tate has succeeded here in producing a book that is impressively wide-ranging in its theological concerns and precisely focussed in its literary analysis. He asks large questions about the relationship of these two disciplines, questions which he answers with reference to a range of exciting contemporary fiction." - Professor Terence Wright, School of English Literature, Language & Linguistics, Newcastle University, UK., 'In its insistence that contemporary literature offers a "space" for theological ideas and images to be explored, often in a sceptical and challenging way, this book is compelling.' University of Edinburgh Journal, June 2010, 'Identifying pertinant biblical tropes and subject matter and the lasting influence of more definitely theological writers such as Hawthorne, Buechner and Barth on today's practitioners, there is much assured close reading and pulling together of critical and historical threads . . . a compendious, conceptually sound study which asks good questions.', "[Tate's] readings are subtle and invariably interesting...the reader is drawn engagingly into the exploration...Tate's book is an enjoyable and stimulating read, never aggressive of obscure." The Glass, Spring 09

Dewey Edition22

Dewey Decimal823.914093823

Table Of ContentAcknowledgements \ 1. Introduction: Re-enchanted Fictions \ 2. This Other Christ: Jesus in Contemporary Fiction \ 3. John Updike's Holy Heresy: Between Grace and 'the Devil's motley' 4. Miracles and the Mundane: Signs, Wonders and the Novel \ 5. Little Wonder: John Irving's Modern Miracles \ 6. 'How Clear is Your Vision of Heaven?': Douglas Coupland at the End of the World \ 7. Conclusion: Miraculous Realism \ Bibliography \ Index

SynopsisHow does contemporary fiction engage with the claims and ideas of Christian theology? Can 'secular fictions' accommodate transcendent experiences or encounters with the divine? Does belief continue to influence the shape of fiction in any meaningful way? This study argues against the idea that the 'postmodern condition' of late twentieth and early twenty-first century culture has undermined the close and creative association between religious practice and literature. It suggests that the novel, as a major narrative genre of contemporary western culture, has become an increasingly vital, dynamic and problematic space for engaging with the sacred. Andrew Tate examines the work of more than a dozen contemporary Anglo-American novelists, including John Updike, Douglas Coupland, John Irving, Toni Morrison, Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie. He shows how the 'sacred turn' in western culture is manifested within the novel from the 1980s to the present, paying particular attention to representations of such theological ideas as the miraculous, the heretical, the apocalyptic and the messianic., This book provides a detailed exploration of the spiritual and religious contexts and subtexts of contemporary fiction.

LC Classification NumberPR830.R5