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Invisible Conversations

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Invisible Conversations

Religion in the Literature of America

Edited by Roger Lundin

Published by: Baylor University Press

Series: Studies in Christianity and Literature

Imprint: Baylor University Press

Sales Date: 2009-02-25

Hardcover
ISBN 9781602581470
232 Pages

$44.99

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Digital
ISBN 9781602582781
232 Pages

$59.95

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Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

American literature offers exceptional resources for understanding the complex role religion has played in the life of the culture and in the experience of its people. In recent decades, however, the academic study of that literature has largely treated religion, in the words of a noted scholar, as an "invisible domain." In joining the rich conversations that have enlivened American culture for centuries, Invisible Conversations seeks to bring to light the vital role that religion has played in the literature of the United States.

Introduction by Roger Lundin

Part 1 Religion and American Fiction

1. Finding a Prose for God: Religion and American Fiction

Denis Donoghue

2. American Literature and/as Spiritual Inquiry

Lawrence Buell

Part 2 Religion and American Poetry

3. Variety as Religious Experience: The Poetics of the Plain Style

Elisa New

4. Keeping the Metaphors Alive: American Poetry and Transformation

Barbara Packer

Part 3 Literature, Religion, and the African American Experience

5. Genres of Redemption: African Americans, the Bible, and Slavery from Lemuel Haynes to Frederick Douglass

Mark A. Noll

6. Balm in Gilead: Memory, Mourning, and Healing in African American Autobiography

Albert J. Raboteau

7. The Race for Faith: Justice, Mercy, and the Sign of the Cross in African American Literature

Katherine Clay Bassard

8. Forms of Redemption

John Stauffer

Part 4 Literature, Religion, and American Public Life

9. Hamlet without the Prince: The Role of Religion in Postwar Nonfiction

Alan Wolfe

10. "The Only Permanent State": Belief and the Culture of Incredulity

Andrew Delbanco

Part 5 Theology and American Literature

11. How the Church Became Invisible: A Christian Reading of American Literary Tradition

Stanley Hauerwas and Ralph C. Wood

12. "The Play of the Lord": On the Limits of Critique

Roger Lundin

Notes

Index

Roger Lundin (1948-2015) was Arthur F. Holmes Professor of Faith and Learning, Wheaton College. He is the author of a number of books, including: There Before Us: Religion, Literature, and Culture From Emerson to Wendell Berry, Editor (2007), From Nature to Experience: The American Search for Cultural Authority (2005), and Emily Dickinson and the Art of Belief, 2nd ed. (2004).

The volume should go far toward reestablishing interest in the religious dimensions of American literature.
~Philip F. Gura, Newman Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Culture, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

A must-read for anyone curious about how religion figures within the larger course of American literary and intellectual history.
~John Gatta, Sewanee

Invisible Conversations is an exhilarating and welcome collection.
~Eric Sundquist, Professor of Literature, University of California, Los Angeles

Building Jewish is clearly and authoritatively written and is richly illustrated, making it ideal for classroom use as well as a basic scholarly resource.
~Jodi Magness, Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill