Exodus and redemption in Toni Morrison’s Paradise: a magical encounter with the Bible
Focusing on writers who approach the Bible as a source that is both instructive and dangerous,Subverting Scriptures seeks to provide an academic analysis of cultural biblical saturation at a time when measured voices are necessary to counterbalance politically motivated religious rhetoric. Using as its point of departure the current political landscape – where the Bible is drawn on freely and unabashedly without critical reflection to legitimate and justify all manner of agendas – the contributors in this collection engage the Bible in new, imaginative, and critical ways, in the hopes of creating a new space for dialogue.
Slayers of Moses, The: The Emergence of Rabbinic Interpretation in Modern Literary Theory
The leopards the rebellious, profaning, heretical forces have become part of the holy ritual itself, through interpretation. Displacement not only describes such extreme misreading, is not only a technique of interpretation; it is the only way to survive the endless displacements of Jewish history. Displacement is a necessary re-vision and re-creation of a text which is the only anchor of a people displaced in space. Displacement, in other words, is both the condition of and answer to exile. The leopards become part of the ritual. In the school of heretic hermeneutics, holy and profane intermingle; there is something sacred about writing, commentary, and texts, yet these notions are displaced into the profane fields of literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis. At the same time, under the guise of revisionary interpretation, the Temple and Scripture are profaned. The lines become crossed: who knows now which is the holy, and which the profane: which the leopards and which the priests?
Shoeless Joe: Fantasy and the Humor of Fellow-Feeling
In his essay on Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, Thomas Carlyle writes of a humor that manifests itself in smile rather than laughter. "Richter is a man of mirth," says Carlyle, whose humor is "capricious . . . quaint . . . [and] heartfelt" (15). The three adjectives represent for Carlyle the essence of what he terms "true humor" because they suggest Richter's enormous respect for humanity. "True humor," he goes on to say, "springs not more from the head than from the heart; it is not contempt, its essence is love; it issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper" (17). These smiles are not Hobbesian smirks of superiority1 but genuine signs of compassion for, sympathy toward, and empathy with the object of the humor. Carlyle further provides a direct link between humor and both pathos and nobility; the link is the smile of the caring man. For Carlyle, this smile is one of "fellow-feeling":