Djuna Barnes and Theology: Melancholy, Body, Theodicy (New Directions in Religion and Literature)

Modernism, religion, and queer bodies come together in this study of Djuna Barnes's writings and art. Examining the role of Barnes’s theological imagination in relation to a phenomenology of suffering, joy, and sexed embodiment, this book unfolds an intricate synthesis of theology, psychoanalysis, and narrative theory to interrogate how queerness informs her art. Providing an original contribution to religious and literary theory, Ng develops a neo-ontological account of melancholy in relation to the myth of the Fall and provides a novel framework for understanding comedy and tragedy in relation to the question of theodicy. Presented in light of a large body of new archival evidence, Barnes’s works are also examined for the first time in relation to a wide range of intertextual and intermedial encounters, including the medieval mysticism of Marguerite Porete, Stravinsky’s music, 16th- and 18th-century engravings by Albrecht Dürer and Joseph Ottinger, and French and Russian literature from Baudelaire and Lautréamont to Proust and Dostoevsky. "Modernism, religion, and queer bodies come together in this study of Djuna Barnes's writings and art. Examining the role of Barnes's theological imagination in relation to a phenomenology of suffering, joy, and sexed embodiment, this book unfolds an intricate synthesis of theology, psychoanalysis, and narrative theory to interrogate how queerness informs her art. Providing an original contribution to religious and literary theory, Ng develops a neo-ontological account of melancholy in relation to the myth of the Fall and provides a novel framework for understanding comedy and tragedy in relation to the question of theodicy. Presented in light of a large body of new archival evidence, Barnes's works are also examined for the first time in relation to a wide range of intertextual and intermedial encounters, including the medieval mysticism of Marguerite Porete, Stravinsky's music, 16th- and 18th-century engravings by Albrecht Dürer and Joseph Ottinger, and French and Russian literature from Baudelaire and Lautrǎmont to Proust and Dostoevsky."-- Provided by publisher Modernism, religion, and queer bodies come together in this study of Djuna Barnes's writings and art. Examining the role of Barnes's theological imagination in relation to a phenomenology of suffering, joy, and sexed embodiment, this book unfolds an intricate synthesis of theology, psychoanalysis, and narrative theory to interrogate how queerness informs her art. Providing an original contribution to religious and literary theory, Ng develops a neo-ontological account of melancholy in relation to the myth of the Fall and provides a novel framework for understanding comedy and tragedy in relation to the question of theodicy. Presented in light of a large body of new archival evidence, Barnes's works are also examined for the first time in relation to a wide range of intertextual and intermedial encounters, including the medieval mysticism of Marguerite Porete, Stravinsky's music, 16th- and 18th-century engravings by Albrecht Durer and Joseph Ottinger, and French and Russian literature from Baudelaire and Lautreamont to Proust and Dostoevsky Cover Contents List of Figures Acknowledgments Preface: Theology and the Queer Body Introduction: A Dialectic of Melancholy and Theodicy Melancholy and Ontology The Question of Theodicy Weak Theodicy The Judgment of Art Moods, Modes, and the Ontology of the Work of Art 1 Melancholy and the Fall Laughing and Crying Hybrid Bodies: The Problem of Corporeal Assumption 2 Comedy I: Ladies Almanack and the Lesbian Sensorium “Girls! Girls!”—or Utopia Becoming-Lesbian 3 Comedy II: Ryder, Rape, and Recurrence Humor, Satire, Irony To Spit or Swallow? 4 Tragedy I: Nightwood and the Eschatological Body The Resurrection of the Body Of Beasts Blond and Damned 5 Tragedy II: The Antiphon and the Refusal of History Sublimation and Its Discontents Play and Repining Conclusion: Life or Death? Bibliography Index