Fault Lines of Modernity : The Fractures and Repairs of Religion, Ethics, and Literature

"This state of the art collection offers fresh perspectives on why intersections between literature, religion, and ethics can address the fault lines of modernity and are not necessarily the cause of modernity's 'faults.' From a diverse cohort of scholars from around the world, with appointments in comparative literature and other disciplines, the essays suggest that the imagined hegemony of a Judeo-Christian Western project is neither exclusively true nor productive. However, the essays also suggest that elements of the Western religious traditions are important vectors for understanding modernity's complicated relationship to the past."--Bloomsbury Publishing. Cover......Page 1 Half Title......Page 2 Title......Page 4 Copyright......Page 5 Contents......Page 6 Acknowledgments......Page 8 Introduction......Page 10 Part One The transcendental and transcendence......Page 40 Preamble......Page 42 New Europe in its medieval youth and Renaissance maturation......Page 43 Refusal of senescence by modernist inheritors......Page 48 Bibliography......Page 51 2 “Clearer awareness of the ... crisis”: Erich Auerbach’s radical relativism and the “wealth of conflicts” of the historical......Page 54 References......Page 69 3 Secularism and post-secularism......Page 72 Bibliography......Page 85 Part Two Literature......Page 86 4 Redemptive readings between Maurice Blanchot and Franz Rosenzweig......Page 88 References......Page 102 5 “So what if you are big?”: The ethics of plurality in Indian literatures of devotion......Page 104 Works cited......Page 126 6 Alterity and the ethics of the novel in J. M. Coetzee’s quasi-realism......Page 130 Deconstructing allegories: Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians in ethical criticism......Page 136 Presenting representations of others: Literalness in Waiting for the Barbarians......Page 140 Imaginary others and real ethics: Simultaneity in Coetzee’s metafictional encounters......Page 146 Conclusion......Page 153 Bibliography......Page 154 Part Three Religion......Page 156 7 Asmodeus, the “eye of providence,” and the ethics of seeing in nineteenth-century mystery fiction......Page 158 Mystery and Asmodeus......Page 159 Asmodeus and providence......Page 166 Bibliography......Page 169 8 Modernism’s religious rhetorics: Or, what bothered Baudelaire......Page 172 Works cited......Page 188 9 Poetry and religion: Approaches to Christian transcendence in late-twentieth-century poets......Page 192 Poetry, pain, and God’s work of art......Page 194 Poetry as deadly reassurance......Page 196 A God caught in human nets......Page 199 Poetry and the liberation of the unbeliever......Page 201 Works cited......Page 203 Part Four Ethics......Page 206 10 Instituting the other: Ethical fault lines in readings and pedagogies of alterity......Page 208 A shared crisis......Page 213 Theoretical configurations of the Other......Page 215 Bibliography......Page 222 11 Thinking God on the basis of ethics: Levinas, The Brothers Karamazov, and Dostoevsky’s anti-Semitism......Page 226 Bibliography......Page 234 12 An ethics for missing persons......Page 236 Works cited......Page 254 Index......Page 256 This state of the art collection offers fresh perspectives on why intersections between literature, religion, and ethics can address the fault lines of modernity and are not necessarily the cause of modernity's 'faults.' From a diverse cohort of scholars from around the world, with appointments in comparative literature and other disciplines, the essays suggest that the imagined hegemony of a Judeo-Christian Western project is neither exclusively true nor productive. However, the essays also suggest that elements of the Western religious traditions are important vectors for understanding modernity's complicated relationship to the past (from publisher) Based on papers presented at the conferences, 2013 International Comparative Literature Association Congress (ICLA) held in Paris, and, the 2014 Fault Lines of Modernity conference, held at San Francisco State University.