From modernist transcendence to postmodern immanence: Redefining divinity and authority in 20th century American theology and literature.

摘要

In this dissertation I posit connections between concurrent literary and theological expression in 20th century America. Specifically, I discuss neo-orthodox, death-of-God, and American liberation theologies (black, feminist, womanist, and gay/lesbian theologies) in relation to literary works and criticism contemporary with them. Using historical definitions of modernism and postmodernism, I focus on similarities between conceptualizations of God and the author. Responding to developments such as the proliferation of mass culture and the outbreak of World War II, modernists advocated a distant God and a correspondingly removed author as a means of establishing the transcendence of art and theology. Postmodernists, beginning in the 1960s, responded to the codification of modernism by attempting to subvert hierarchies, repositioning God as an incarnated Jesus, whose counterpart is a textualized author in literature. Because representations of Christ frequently articulate modernist and postmodern assumptions, I also consider depictions of Jesus in both theological and literary works. Central to this project is the argument that theology and art are shaped by shared cultural concerns. This connection is generally missing in discussions of the conjunction of "religion and literature." Critics analyzing theological elements in literary works tend to perpetuate the high modernist separation of "high" culture from mass or popular culture. Maintaining that religion and art transcend their immediate circumstances, these critics disregard questions of larger societal influence. The field of "religion and literature" has resisted interrogation of its modernist assumptions even as the disciplines of religious studies and literary studies have increasingly highlighted the presence of social and political concerns in works in their fields individually. As a result, the perspectives of marginalized populations, including African Americans, women, gays and lesbians, are underrepresented in studies of "literature and religion," similar to their exclusion from high modernist canons. Participating in postmodern developments in the individual fields of religious and literary studies, my project expands upon their more integrative emphases. I propose that formulating historical links between synchronic literary and religious works forces us to acknowledge the contingency of cultural values, and to understand that they are not absolute or universal but rather contextual and particular.