Christopher Douglas
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781501702112
- eISBN:
- 9781501703539
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501702112.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter examines Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible (1998)—a novel deeply critical of the resurgence and deeply informed by American multiculturalism. The book is a significant exception ...
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This chapter examines Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible (1998)—a novel deeply critical of the resurgence and deeply informed by American multiculturalism. The book is a significant exception to serious literary culture's general inattention to the astonishing, unpredicted Christian resurgence of the last forty years. Kingsolver comprehensively critiques American fundamentalism, attacking a certain version of Christianity on its own grounds of Pauline universalism. Yet the novel's universalism is doubled and ultimately undone by a critical relativism. Its strategic ambivalence in its moments of universalism and relativism makes it symptomatic of a kind of impasse that multiculturalism has faced since the 1970s in its response to the powerful conservative Christian resurgence.Less
This chapter examines Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible (1998)—a novel deeply critical of the resurgence and deeply informed by American multiculturalism. The book is a significant exception to serious literary culture's general inattention to the astonishing, unpredicted Christian resurgence of the last forty years. Kingsolver comprehensively critiques American fundamentalism, attacking a certain version of Christianity on its own grounds of Pauline universalism. Yet the novel's universalism is doubled and ultimately undone by a critical relativism. Its strategic ambivalence in its moments of universalism and relativism makes it symptomatic of a kind of impasse that multiculturalism has faced since the 1970s in its response to the powerful conservative Christian resurgence.
Jane Hwang Degenhardt
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748640843
- eISBN:
- 9780748651597
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748640843.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This book explores the theme of Christian conversion to Islam in twelve early-modern English plays by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Massinger and others. In these works, conversion from Christianity to Islam ...
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This book explores the theme of Christian conversion to Islam in twelve early-modern English plays by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Massinger and others. In these works, conversion from Christianity to Islam is represented as both erotic and tragic: as a sexual seduction and a fate worse than death. The book examines the theatre's treatment of the intercourse between the Christian and Islamic faiths to reveal connections between sexuality, race and confessional identity in early modern English drama and culture. In addition, it shows how England's encounter with Islam reanimated post-Reformation debates about the embodiment of Christian faith. As the book compellingly demonstrates, the erotics of conversion added fuel to the fires of controversies over Pauline universalism, Christian martyrdom, the efficacy of relics and rituals and the ideals of the Knights of Malta.Less
This book explores the theme of Christian conversion to Islam in twelve early-modern English plays by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Massinger and others. In these works, conversion from Christianity to Islam is represented as both erotic and tragic: as a sexual seduction and a fate worse than death. The book examines the theatre's treatment of the intercourse between the Christian and Islamic faiths to reveal connections between sexuality, race and confessional identity in early modern English drama and culture. In addition, it shows how England's encounter with Islam reanimated post-Reformation debates about the embodiment of Christian faith. As the book compellingly demonstrates, the erotics of conversion added fuel to the fires of controversies over Pauline universalism, Christian martyrdom, the efficacy of relics and rituals and the ideals of the Knights of Malta.
