William Closson James

Locations of the Sacred

Essays on Religion, Literature, and Canadian Culture

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Where do Canadians encounter religious meaning? Not where they used to! In ten lively and wide-ranging essays, William Closson James examines various derivations of the sacred in contemporary Canadian culture. Most of the essays focus on the religious aspects of modern Canadian English fiction - for example, in essays on the fiction of Hugh MacLennan, Morley Callaghan, Margaret Atwood and Joy Kogawa. But James also explores other, non-literary events and activities in which Canadians have found something transcendant or revelatory. Each of the chapters in Locations of the Sacred can be read independently as a discrete analysis of its subject. Taken as a whole, the essays make up a powerful argument for a new way of looking at the religious in contemporary Canada - not in the traditional ways of being religious, but in activities and locations previously thought to be "secular." Thus, the domains and modes of the religious are expanded, not restricted.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Revised edition
• Seitenzahl: 288
• Erscheinungstermin: 25. August 2000
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 226mm x 152mm x 15mm
• Gewicht: 431g
• ISBN-13: 9780889203679
• ISBN-10: 0889203679
• Artikelnr.: 42301987

Autorenporträt

William Closson James was professor at Queen's University in Kingston in the Department of Religious Studies.

Inhaltsangabe

Table of Contents for
Locations of the Sacred: Essays on Religion, Literature, and Canadian
Culture by William Closson James
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: Dislocating the Sacred: The Protestant Voice
The Protestant Voice
A Protestant Trio: Davies, MacLennan, and Laurence
Imprisonment and Liberation
How Is Canadian Literature "Religious"?
The Protestant Principle in English-Canadian Fiction
A Tentative Conclusion
Chapter 2: Relocating the Sacred: The Human Ground of Transcendence
Eternity and Transcendence
"Eternity" in Callaghan and MacLennan
The Ordinary and the Sacred in Mitchell and Munro
Divining the Depths in Davies, Laurence, and Atwood
Conclusion
Chapter 3: Nature as the Locale of the Sacred
Native and Christian Attitudes
Some Typical Canadian Views
Geography over History
A New Direction
Chapter 4: In Quest of the Sacred: The Canoe Trip
The Quest Pattern
Stages of the Quest
Transformative Quest and Canadian Character
The Canoe Trip as Initiation Rite
Conclusion
Chapter 5: Sacred Death: The Belcher Islands Massacre
Introduction
Geographical and Religious Backgrounds
Narrative of the Events
The Contemporary Reaction to the Murders
Analysis
A Personal Epilogue
Chapter 6: Theodicy and the Sacred: A. M. Klein and Hugh MacLennan
Parallel Dislocations
The Second Scroll as Theodicy
The Watch that Ends the Night and Selfhood
The Everyman and the Self
Chaos into Cosmos
Chapter 7: Love and the Sacred: The Ambiguities of Morley Callaghan's Such
Is My Beloved
Callaghan's "Certain Perceptions"
The Two Conflicting Realms
The Song of Songs: Love and the Sacred
Conclusion: Incarnational Humanism
Chapter 8: Sacred Passages: Native Symbols in Atwood and Engel
The Female Initiation Pattern
Atwood's Surfacing
Engel's Bear
Conclusion
Chapter 9: Nordicity and the Sacred: The Journeys of Thomas York and Aritha
van Herk
The Fugitive
The Spiritual Quest
The Return to the South in Desireless
"No End to This Road": Aritha van Herk
Chapter 10: Mutuality and the Sacred: Joy Kogawa
From Divine Abandonment to Human Solidarity
Bread and Stones and Names in Obasan
From Silence to Communion
Conclusion
References
Index