Contemporary Fiction and Christianity by Andrew Tate

Contemporary Fiction and Christianity by Andrew Tate

This book provides a detailed exploration of the spiritual and religious contexts and subtexts of contemporary fiction. How does contemporary fiction engage with the claims and ideas of Christian theology? Can 'secular fictions' accommodate transcendent experiences or encounters with the divine? Does belief continue to influence the shape of fiction in any meaningful way? This study argues against the idea that the 'postmodern condition' of late twentieth and early twenty-first century culture has undermined the close and creative association between religious practice and literature. It suggests that the novel, as a major narrative genre of contemporary western culture, has become an increasingly vital, dynamic and problematic space for engaging with the sacred. Tate examines the work of more than a dozen contemporary Anglo-American novelists, including John Updike, Douglas Coupland, John Irving, Michele Roberts, Don DeLillo and Jim Crace. He shows how the 'sacred turn' in western culture is manifested within the novel from the 1980s to the present, paying particular attention to representations of such theological ideas as the miraculous, the heretical, the apocalyptic and the messianic.

"Andrew Tate has succeeded here in producing a book that is impressively wide-ranging in its theological concerns and precisely focussed in its literary analysisHe asks large questions about the relationship of these two disciplines, questions which he answers with reference to a range of exciting contemporary fiction." - Professor Terence Wright, School of English Literature, Language & Linguistics, Newcastle University, UK."

Andrew Tate is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English and Creative Writing at Lancaster University, UK.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781441161758
ISBN 10	1441161759
Title	Contemporary Fiction and Christianity
Author	Andrew Tate
Series	Continuum Literary Studies
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Continuum Publishing Corporation
Year published	2010-10-12
Number of pages	168
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.