Tag Archives: Covenantal Literature

The Bible as Literature or Literature as The Bible

The following is an abstract for a paper I’m working on. It’s at the heart of my covenantal literature project. Literary scholars seeking to integrate faith and literature have faced a perpetual problem: an inability to agree on the how the Bible and literature are connected.  On the surface, the ubiquitous “Bible as Literature” courseContinue reading “The Bible as Literature or Literature as The Bible”

Tess of the D’urbervilles: A Covenantal Plot

Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’urbervilles displays the doubt and religious skepticism of the late Victorian period. I’m teaching it right now. It is more overt in its engagement with religion than Pride and Prejudice and Great Expectations and more problematic. Here’s an outline of the plot using the covenant model. Tess Durbeyfield, a beautiful country girl, appears fated for troubleContinue reading “Tess of the D’urbervilles: A Covenantal Plot”

Covenantal Conference Papers

Today I presented at the 2021 Southeast Regional Conference on Christianity and Literature. It was great to see old friends and hear some in-progress work. I invariably started grouping the papers I heard into the categories of the covenantal model. You can find the summaries of ten papers below.

Work In Progress: Fear and Trembling in Las Vegas Part 4

CONCLUSION Kurt Vonnegut claimed that the New Journalists like Thompson practiced “the literary equivalent of Cubism.” By exposing the twisted nature of reality, they confronted readers with “luminous aspects of beloved old truths.” Reading Thompson’s cubist quest alongside Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling underscores three truths that, while not necessarily beloved, are pertinent nonetheless. First, whetherContinue reading “Work In Progress: Fear and Trembling in Las Vegas Part 4”

Work In Progress: Fear and Trembling in Las Vegas Part 3

SECTION III: Out on Highway 61 This is the heart of Kierkegaard’s insight into the story of Abraham and Isaac: we must resign any path to God that first takes us through a universal system of ethics and reason. Instead, the individual must confront the absolute God of the Bible directly. Then the individual canContinue reading “Work In Progress: Fear and Trembling in Las Vegas Part 3”

Work in Progress: Fear and Trembling in Las Vegas Part 2

SECTION I: Twisted Reality The key stylistic features of Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling are: Its pseudonymous authorship, which opens up a gap between the author and the book’s argument Its dialectical interplay of narrative and analysis And, finally, its sense of humor. Kierkegaard satirizes staid Christianity and pretentious Hegelian philosophy in equal measures, and theContinue reading “Work in Progress: Fear and Trembling in Las Vegas Part 2”

Work In Progress: Fear and Trembling in Las Vegas Part 1

Here is the introduction to an in-progress paper about Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. In covenantal terms, it’s about ethics and sanctions. Fear and Trembling in Las Vegas Hunter Thompson used the phrase “fear and loathing” for the first time in the wake of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. “There is no human being withinContinue reading “Work In Progress: Fear and Trembling in Las Vegas Part 1”

Robinson Crusoe: A Covenantal Outline

You can find my earlier posts on Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe here. THEMES Crusoe shows us that divine providence often works through, rather than in spite of, hardships. Crusoe’s experience on the island demonstrates that hierarchies among people are natural, but intolerance is a sinful distortion of that natural hierarchy. While Crusoe believes thatContinue reading “Robinson Crusoe: A Covenantal Outline”

The Apostles Creed: A Covenantal Overview

I am reading James K. A. Smith’s book Imagining the Kingdom as a background source for my Covenantal Shakespeare course. Smith argues that our actions reflect the attunement of bodies and hearts more than our rational minds. This means that we should consider the kinesthetic (bodily) and aesthetic (imaginative) practices we take part in everyContinue reading “The Apostles Creed: A Covenantal Overview”