Through a Glass Darkly

Suffering, the Sacred, and the Sublime in Literature and Theory

Holly Faith Nelson, Lynn R. Szabo, Jens Zimmermann, Holly Faith Nelson, Lynn R. Szabo, Jens Zimmermann

• Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781554582068
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism Theory
• Index: Literature

Suffering, the sacred, and the sublime are concepts that often surface in humanities research in an attempt to come to terms with what is challenging, troubling or impossible to represent. These intersecting concepts are used to mediate the gap between the spoken and the unspeakable, between experience and language, between body and spirit, between the immanent and the transcendent, and between the human and the divine. The twenty-five essays in Through a Glass Darkly: Suffering, the Sacred, and the Sublime in Literature and Theory, written by international scholars working in the fields of literary criticism, philosophy, and history, address the ways in which literature and theory have engaged with these three concepts and related concerns. The contributors analyze literary and theoretical texts from the medieval period to the postmodern age, from the works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne, and Herbert to those of Endô Shûsaku, Alice Munro, Annie Dillard, Emmanuel Levinas, and Slavoj Žižek. This book will be of particular interest to scholars of religion and literature, philosophy and literature, aesthetic theory, and trauma studies.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Illustrations
• Trauma and Transcendence: An Introduction
• THE CLASICAL AND BIBLICAL INHERITANCE
• MEDIEVAL VISIONS AND DREAMS
• SHAKESPEAREAN HORROR
• METAPHYSICAL AFFLICATIONS
• THE ETHICAL ROMANTIC SUBLIME
• SUFFERING AND SACRAMENT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
• SACRED MODERNISM(S)
• THE FELLOWSHIP OF SUFFERING AND HOPE IN FANTASY LITERATURE
• VIOLATION AND REDEMPTION IN CANADIAN FICTION
• THE AMERICAN SUBLIME
• JAPANESE (RE)VISIONING OF THE SUFFERING CHRIST
• POSTMODERN AESTHETICS AND BEYOND
• Bibliography
• Notes on Contributors
• Index