The Imagination of Their Hearts: The Coming Apocalypse in Literary Studies

Literary theory has always been theology by other means, a claim borne out by this essay’s brief survey of modern theoretical approaches as points of view and as failed god’s-eye views. Like John’s Apocalypse, my alarming title is more hopeful than it sounds; for while humanistic literary study is i...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Hodgkins, Christopher 1958- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Johns Hopkins University Press 2021
In: Christianity & literature
Year: 2021, Volume: 70, Issue: 3, Pages: 325-335
IxTheo Classification:CD Christianity and Culture
HC New Testament
Further subjects:B Theology
B Critical Theory
B Literature
B Apocalypse
B Luke
B Christianity
B Humanism
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Summary:Literary theory has always been theology by other means, a claim borne out by this essay’s brief survey of modern theoretical approaches as points of view and as failed god’s-eye views. Like John’s Apocalypse, my alarming title is more hopeful than it sounds; for while humanistic literary study is indeed doomed to increased disintegration and irrelevance if it continues to be cut off from its roots in biblical exegesis, Christian aesthetics, and moral theology, the human heart always will have its reasons for making, telling, and interpreting poems and stories. Thus the likely institutional collapse of secular literary humanism over the next decade or two into a welter of competing propagandas will be the moment of revelation and rebirth, if Christian readers and critics are wise enough to reject the tyranny of the postmodern non serviam and get on with their proper business: being good servants of beauty and truth.
ISSN:2056-5666
Contains:Enthalten in: Christianity & literature
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1353/chy.2021.0038