Melville's wisdom : religion, skepticism, and literature in nineteenth-century America /
"This book explores the manner in which Herman Melville responds to the spiritual crisis of modernity by using the language of the biblical Old Testament wisdom books to moderate contemporary discourses on religion, skepticism, and literature. Melville's work is an example of how romantic...
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
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New York, NY :
Oxford University Press,
[2021]
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| Series: | American Academy of Religion academy series.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Connect to the full text of this electronic book |
| Summary: | "This book explores the manner in which Herman Melville responds to the spiritual crisis of modernity by using the language of the biblical Old Testament wisdom books to moderate contemporary discourses on religion, skepticism, and literature. Melville's work is an example of how romantic literature fills the interpretive lacuna left by contemporary theology. Damien Schlarb argues that attending to Melville's engagement with the wisdom books (Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes) can help us understand a paradox at the heart of American modernity: the simultaneous displacement and affirmation of biblical language and religious culture. In wisdom, which addresses questions of theology, radical scepticism, and the nature of evil, Melville finds an ethos of critical inquiry that allows him to embrace the acumen of modern analytical techniques such as higher biblical criticism, while salvaging simultaneously the spiritual authority of biblical language. Wisdom for Melville constitutes both object and analytical framework in this balancing act. Melville's Wisdom joins other works of postsecular literary studies in challenging its own discipline's constitutive secularization narrative by rethinking modern, putatively secular cultural formations in terms of their reciprocity with religious concepts and texts. Schlarb foregrounds Melville's sustained, career-spanning concern with biblical wisdom, its formal properties, and its knowledge-creating potential. By excavating this project from Melville's oeuvre, Melville's Wisdom shows how he seeks to avoid the spiritually corrosive effects of suspicious reading while celebrating truth-seeking over subversive iniquity"-- |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (xi, 252 pages). |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780197585597 0197585590 9780197585580 0197585582 0197585574 9780197585573 |