Authorial Divinity in the Twentieth Century

Authorial Divinity in the Twentieth Century
Author: Barbara K. Olson
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
Total Pages: 164
Release: 1997
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780838753163

"Whatever a writer's religious assumptions and histories, the literary device of omniscient narration traps a writer into a pose as God, at least some sort of God, be it one the writer eschews, avows, or longs for. In this study, Barbara K. Olson examines the relationship between both the writer and the omniscient narrator to God." "Olson explains how modernists Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Woolf both illustrate how authors' particular styles of omniscience bear a reliable though variable relation to their own or their culture's particular conceptions of God." "The experience of novelists generally attests to perennial theological conundrums into which their creating and narrating have cast them - transcendence vs. immanence, providential care vs. cosmic capriciousness, determinism vs. freedom. Not surprisingly, such atheists as John Fowles and Ronald Sukenick have aimed their narrational experiments in omniscience at subverting what Fowles has called the "godgame" that this device requires. Such other writers as Flannery O'Connor, Graham Greene, and Murial Spark have predictably relied on the device as one consonant with their theistic assumptions."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Nonconformist Theology in the Twentieth Century

Nonconformist Theology in the Twentieth Century
Author: Alan P.F. Sell
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2012-09-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1620324229

This book is the first comprehensive study of the systematic, doctrinal, and constructive theology produced within the major Nonconformist traditions during the twentieth century. By the end of the nineteenth century, modern biblical critical methods were fairly widely adopted, evolutionary thought was in the air, and doctrinal modifications, especially concerning the fatherhood of God, were underway. Sell charts the influence on Nonconformist thinking in the twentieth century of the New Theology associated with R. J. Campbell, the First World War, the reception of Karl Barth, the theological excitement of the 1960s, and growing religious pluralism. The second lecture concerns the major Christian doctrines of God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the Trinity. Whereas in the early decades of the century there was considerable emphasis upon the atonement, during the concluding two decades the Trinity received more attention than had formerly been the case. In Lecture Three attention is directed to ecclesiological and ecumenical themes. The Nonconformists are presented as Protestant, and as displaying some zeal in propagating their particular understanding of the Church. The doctrinal aspects of their national and international moves toward inner-family unity and of their broader ecumenical relationships are considered. Eschatology is treated in the concluding lecture prior to Sell's assessment of the significance of twentieth-century Nonconformist theology, and his observations regarding its current state, its future content, and its practitioners.

Heart of the Living God

Heart of the Living God
Author: Michael G. Maness
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 730
Release: 2004-06-23
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1418400254

Maness asks us to tie up our sneakers, for we are going to have some fun as we hike into the Grand Canyon of Love. Love is the treasure of life. It is Love all the way. Nothing else really matters outside of Love. Best of all, our Love will only get better in heaven. The treasured ability to have loving relationships is Gods gift to us in our Imago Deithe image of God we all share. Likewise, what we know of Love this side of heaven is but a dusty image of what God experiences. I want to get personally involved, says Maness. Can we have a free-will relationship with anyone, even God, if all of what we do and think is settled? I dont think so. Love is greater than that, and I shall prove that, and that is indeed a Grand Canyon. Manes brings some of the brain-splitting complexities of this to light with good humor, introduces dynamic foreknowledge, and challenges Classical Theisms avoidance of Love. And he exposes some foul play in the process. Thats the first half of the book. For those wanting to strike out on their own (wanting to see more of the depth and diversity of the Grand Canyon), the second half contains reviews of about 60 major authors, a 4,000+ Abysmal Bibliography, and a huge index to just about everything in the book. Maness has thrown a gauntlet before the Classical Theists. So tie up your sneakers and take a hike with Michael G. Maness as he walks with you into the Grand Canyon. see more at www.PreciousHeart.net

Virginia Woolf as a Process-Oriented Thinker

Virginia Woolf as a Process-Oriented Thinker
Author: Veronika Krajícková
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2023-10-02
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1666942308

Virginia Woolf as a Process-Oriented Thinker: Parallels Between Woolf’s Fiction and Process Philosophy introduces Virginia Woolf as a nondualist and process-oriented thinker whose ideas are, despite no direct influence, strikingly similar to those of Alfred North Whitehead. Veronika Krajíčková argues that in their respective fields, literature and philosophy, Woolf and Whitehead both criticized the materialist turn of their time and attempted to reattribute importance to experience and undermine long-rooted dualisms such as subject and object, the animate and the inanimate, the human and the nonhuman, or the self and the other. By erasing the gaps between these dualities, the two thinkers anticipated the poststructuralist thought with which Woolf has been anachronically associated in the last decades. Krajíčková shows that there is no need to analyze Woolf’s fiction via critical and philosophical theories that developed much later. This book demonstrates that Woolf and Whitehead’s ideas may help us adopt more ecologically friendly, selfless, intersubjective, and harmless modes of being in the present day. Both figures emphasize the intrinsic value and importance of each constituent of reality and teach us to appreciate the aesthetic values dispersed throughout our environment.

Stephen King's Contemporary Classics

Stephen King's Contemporary Classics
Author: Philip L. Simpson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2014-11-13
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1442244917

Many readers know Stephen King for his early works of horror, from his fiction debut Carrie to his blockbuster novels The Shining, The Stand, and Misery, among others. While he continues to be a best-selling author, King’s more recent fiction has not received the kind of critical attention that his books from the 1970s and 1980s enjoyed. Recent novels like Duma Key and 1/22/63 have been marginalized and, arguably, cast aside as anomalies within the author’s extensive canon. In Stephen King’s Contemporary Classics: Reflections on the Modern Master of Horror, Philip L. Simpson and Patrick McAleer present a collection of essays that analyze, assess, and critique King’s post-1995 compositions. Purposefully side-stepping studies of earlier work, these essays are arranged into three main parts: the first section examines five King novels published between 2009 and 2013, offering genuinely fresh scholarship on King; the second part looks at the development of King’s distinct brand of horror; the third section departs from probing the content of King’s writing and instead focuses on King’s process. By concentrating on King’s most recent writings, this collection offers provocative insights into the author’s work, featuring essays on Dr. Sleep, Duma Key, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Joyland, Under the Dome, and others. As such, Stephen King’s Contemporary Classics will appeal to general fans of the author’s work as well as scholars of Stephen King and modern literature.

Afterlife and Narrative in Contemporary Fiction

Afterlife and Narrative in Contemporary Fiction
Author: Alice Bennett
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2012-07-06
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1137022698

Afterlife and Narrative explores why life after death is such a potent cultural concept today, and why it is such an attractive prospect for modern fiction. The book mines a rich vein of imagined afterlives, from the temporal experiments of Martin Amis's Time's Arrow to narration from heaven in Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones .

Antiquity and the Meanings of Time

Antiquity and the Meanings of Time
Author: Duncan F. Kennedy
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2013-05-30
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0857733699

Society and contemporary culture seem forever fascinated by the topic of time. In modern fiction, Ian McEwan (The Child in Time) and Martin Amis (Time's Arrow) have led the way in exploring the human condition in relation to past, present and future. In cinema, several cultural texts (Memento, Minority Report, The Hours) have similarly reflected a preoccupation with temporality and human experience. And in the sphere of politics, debates about the 'end of history', prompted by Francis Fukuyama, indicate that how we live is deeply determined by our relationship not only to place but also to the passing of time. But what did the ancients think about time? Is our interest in chronology a relatively recent phenomenon? Or does it go further back? In his major new work, Duncan Kennedy indicates that our own fascination with time-reckoning is by no means unique. Discussing a number of key texts (such as Homer's Odyssey; Sophocles' Oedipus Rex; Virgil's Aeneid; and Ovid's Metamophoses) and imaginatively setting these side-by-side with modern works (such as Sterne's Tristram Shandy and Joyce's Ulysses), he shows that, from era to era, and in different ways, human beings have uniformly striven to understand the unfolding of history and their relationship to it. This sophisticated cross-disciplinary book will appeal not only to classicists, but also to scholars and students in the humanities more broadly, as well as beyond.

Religion Around Virginia Woolf

Religion Around Virginia Woolf
Author: Stephanie Paulsell
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2020-01-24
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0271086262

Virginia Woolf was not a religious person in any traditional sense, yet she lived and worked in an environment rich with religious thought, imagination, and debate. From her agnostic parents to her evangelical grandparents, an aunt who was a Quaker theologian, and her friendship with T. S. Eliot, Woolf’s personal circle was filled with atheists, agnostics, religious scholars, and Christian converts. In this book, Stephanie Paulsell considers how the religious milieu that Woolf inhabited shaped her writing in unexpected and innovative ways. Beginning with the religious forms and ideas that Woolf encountered in her family, friendships, travels, and reading, Paulsell explores the religious contexts of Woolf’s life. She shows that Woolf engaged with religion in many ways, by studying, reading, talking and debating, following controversies, and thinking about the relationship between religion and her own work. Paulsell examines the ideas about God that hover around Woolf’s writings and in the minds of her characters. She also considers how Woolf, drawing from religious language and themes in her novels and in her reflections on the practices of reading and writing, created a literature that did, and continues to do, a particular kind of religious work. A thought-provoking contribution to the literature on Woolf and religion, this book highlights Woolf’s relevance to our post-secular age. In addition to fans of Woolf, scholars and general readers interested in religious and literary studies will especially enjoy Paulsell’s well-researched narrative.

Magic Words, Magic Worlds

Magic Words, Magic Worlds
Author: Matthew Oliver
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2022-06-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1476645884

While all fiction uses words to construct models of the world for readers, nowhere is this more obvious than in fantasy fiction. Epic fantasy novels create elaborate secondary worlds entirely out of language, yet the writing style used to construct those worlds has rarely been studied in depth. This book builds the foundations for a study of style in epic fantasy. Close readings of selected novels by such writers as Steven Erikson, Ursula Le Guin, N. K. Jemisin and Brandon Sanderson offer insights into the significant implications of fantasy's use of syntax, perspective, paratexts, frame narratives and more. Re-examining critical assumptions about the reading experience of epic fantasy, this work explores the genre's reputation for flowery, archaic language and its ability to create a sense of wonder. Ultimately, it argues that epic fantasy shapes the way people think, examining how literary representation and style influence perception.

The Encyclopedia of the Novel

The Encyclopedia of the Novel
Author: Peter Melville Logan
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 803
Release: 2014-04-14
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1118723899

Now available in a single volume paperback, this advanced reference resource for the novel and novel theory offers authoritative accounts of the history, terminology, and genre of the novel, in over 140 articles of 500-7,000 words. Entries explore the history and tradition of the novel in different areas of the world; formal elements of the novel (story, plot, character, narrator); technical aspects of the genre (such as realism, narrative structure and style); subgenres, including the bildungsroman and the graphic novel; theoretical problems, such as definitions of the novel; book history; and the novel's relationship to other arts and disciplines. The Encyclopedia is arranged in A-Z format and features entries from an international cast of over 140 scholars, overseen by an advisory board of 37 leading specialists in the field, making this the most authoritative reference resource available on the novel. This essential reference, now available in an easy-to-use, fully indexed single volume paperback, will be a vital addition to the libraries of literature students and scholars everywhere.