Emma Mason, ed. Reading the Abrahamic Faiths: Rethinking Religion and Literature. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. ISBN: 9781472509505. £60.
Rethinking religion and literature in a series of chapters by leading international scholars, Reading the Abrahamic Faiths opens up a dialogue between Jewish, Christian, Islamic and Post-Secular literary cultures.
Literary studies has absorbed religion as another interdisciplinary mode of inquiry without always attending to its multifacted potential to question ideologically neutral readings of culture, belief, emotion, politics and inequality. In response, Reading the Abrahamic Faiths contributes to a reevaluation of the nexus between religion and literature that is socially, affectively and materially determined in its sensitivity to the expression of belief.
Each section – Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Post-Secularism – is introduced by a specialist in these respective areas to introduce the critical readings of the texts and discourses that follow.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Contributors
Religion and literature
1. Emma Mason: 'Re-thinking Religion and Literature'
2. Yvonne Sherwood: 'The Hagaramic and the Abrahamic, or Abraham the non-European'
3. Prasenjit Duara: 'Abrahamic Faiths and Dialogical Transcendence'
Judaism
4. Cynthia Scheinberg: 'Introduction'
5. Neta Stahl: 'Jewish Writers and Nationalist Theology at the Fin-de-Siécle'
6. Jo Carruthers: 'Acts of Hearing in the Book of Esther'
7. Tom Sperlinger: '“Every human being is a cause”: Three re-writings of Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael'
Christianity
8. Josh King: 'Introduction'
9. Adriaan van Klinken: 'The Black Messiah, or Christianity and Masculinity in Ngugi wa Thiong'o's The River Between'
10. Mate Vince: '“Tongue far from heart”: Disguises, Lies and Casuistry in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure'
11. Arina Cirstea: 'Joy, Doubt and Wonder: Contemporary Readings of the Annunciation'
Islam
12. Ziauddin Sardar: 'Introduction'
13. Aamer Hussein: 'The Man from Beni Mora'
14. Ziad Elmarsafy: 'On Naguib Mahfouz's Late Style: Remembering Art, Remembering the Self'
15. Maryam Farahani: 'Sufism and Pain: Poetic Procrastination of Unity in Classical Persian Verse Narratives'
Post-Secularism
16. Anthony Paul Smith: 'Introduction'
17. Daniel Whistler: 'The Categories of Secular Time'
18. Nazry Bahrawi: 'Not my Bible's keeper: Saramago's Cain translates postsecular dissent'
19. Manav Ratti, 'The Postsecular and the Postcolonial'
20. Susan Bassnett, 'Afterword' -
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