Blasphemous Modernism

The 20th-Century Word Made Flesh

Nonfiction, Religion & Spirituality, Christianity, Church, Church & State, Fiction & Literature, Literary Theory & Criticism
Cover of the book Blasphemous Modernism by Steve Pinkerton, Oxford University Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Steve Pinkerton ISBN: 9780190651442
Publisher: Oxford University Press Publication: March 3, 2017
Imprint: Oxford University Press Language: English
Author: Steve Pinkerton
ISBN: 9780190651442
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication: March 3, 2017
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Language: English

Scholars have long described modernism as "heretical" or "iconoclastic" in its assaults on secular traditions of form, genre, and decorum. Yet critics have paid surprisingly little attention to the related category of blasphemy--the rhetoric of religious offense--and to the specific ways this rhetoric operates in, and as, literary modernism. United by a shared commitment to "the word made flesh," writers such as James Joyce, Mina Loy, Richard Bruce Nugent, and Djuna Barnes made blasphemy a key component of their modernist practice, profaning the very scriptures and sacraments that fueled their art. In doing so they belied T. S. Eliot's verdict that the forces of secularization had rendered blasphemy obsolete in an increasingly godless century ("a world in which blasphemy is impossible"); their poems and fictions reveal how forcefully religion endured as a cultural force after the Death of God. More, their transgressions spotlight a politics of religion that has seldom engaged the attention of modernist studies. Blasphemy respects no division of church and state, and neither do the writers who wield it to profane all manner of coercive dogmas--including ecclesiastical as well as more worldly ideologies of race, class, nation, empire, gender, and sexuality. The late-century example of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses affords, finally, a demonstration of how modernism persists in postwar anglophone literature and of the critical role blasphemy plays in that persistence. Blasphemous Modernism thus resonates with the broader cultural and ideological concerns that in recent years have enriched the scope of modernist scholarship.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

Scholars have long described modernism as "heretical" or "iconoclastic" in its assaults on secular traditions of form, genre, and decorum. Yet critics have paid surprisingly little attention to the related category of blasphemy--the rhetoric of religious offense--and to the specific ways this rhetoric operates in, and as, literary modernism. United by a shared commitment to "the word made flesh," writers such as James Joyce, Mina Loy, Richard Bruce Nugent, and Djuna Barnes made blasphemy a key component of their modernist practice, profaning the very scriptures and sacraments that fueled their art. In doing so they belied T. S. Eliot's verdict that the forces of secularization had rendered blasphemy obsolete in an increasingly godless century ("a world in which blasphemy is impossible"); their poems and fictions reveal how forcefully religion endured as a cultural force after the Death of God. More, their transgressions spotlight a politics of religion that has seldom engaged the attention of modernist studies. Blasphemy respects no division of church and state, and neither do the writers who wield it to profane all manner of coercive dogmas--including ecclesiastical as well as more worldly ideologies of race, class, nation, empire, gender, and sexuality. The late-century example of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses affords, finally, a demonstration of how modernism persists in postwar anglophone literature and of the critical role blasphemy plays in that persistence. Blasphemous Modernism thus resonates with the broader cultural and ideological concerns that in recent years have enriched the scope of modernist scholarship.

More books from Oxford University Press

Cover of the book Exodus by Steve Pinkerton
Cover of the book International Relations' Last Synthesis? by Steve Pinkerton
Cover of the book Louisiana Hayride by Steve Pinkerton
Cover of the book The Prince by Steve Pinkerton
Cover of the book George Berkeley: Oxford Bibliographies Online Research Guide by Steve Pinkerton
Cover of the book Tell Me a Story by Steve Pinkerton
Cover of the book Musical Symbolism in the Operas of Debussy and Bartok by Steve Pinkerton
Cover of the book The Biopolitics of Embryos and Alphabets by Steve Pinkerton
Cover of the book The Politics of Child Abuse in America by Steve Pinkerton
Cover of the book The Oxford Handbook of Southwest Archaeology by Steve Pinkerton
Cover of the book Tense Bees and Shell-Shocked Crabs by Steve Pinkerton
Cover of the book The Next Christendom by Steve Pinkerton
Cover of the book Visible Identities by Steve Pinkerton
Cover of the book Let the People See by Steve Pinkerton
Cover of the book China Dreams by Steve Pinkerton
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy