The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Religion

Description

Each essay in this Companion examines one or more literary texts and a religious tradition to illustrate how we can understand both literature and religion better by looking at them in tandem. Unlike most literature and religion books, which tend to focus on Christianity and take a highly theoretical approach inappropriate for non-specialists, The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Religion offers an accessible treatment of both Dharmic and Abrahamic traditions. It provides close readings of texts rather than surveys of large topics, making it an ideal resource for undergraduate and graduate students of literature and religion.

Susan M. Felch is Director of the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship and Professor of English at Calvin College, Michigan. Her publications include The Collected Works of Anne Vaughan Lock (1999), Bakhtin and Religion: A Feeling for Faith (coedited with Paul Contino, 2001), The Emmaus Readers (coedited with Gary Schmidt, 2002-9), and Elizabeth Tyrwhit's Morning and Evening Prayers (2008), for which she won the Josephine A. Roberts Scholarly Edition Award. Her Elizabeth I and her Age (coedited with Donald Stump, 2009) won the Teaching Edition Award from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women.

'The collection's rich diversity bespeaks the generative intercourse of religion and literature.' S. Gowler, CHOICE 'Literature and religion have a close relationship and have encouraged cross-disciplinary study over the years. This companion (one in a well-established series for the general and the academic reader) is a useful snapshot of current thinking. ...The appeal to readers who like connecting religion and literature will be immediate. ... for the general reader and believer, it is likely to stimulate and enrich their study of and reflections on their faith, and, of more value still, enhance their own religious practice.' Stuart Hannabuss, Women, Word, Spirit-Network Journal 'This is an outstanding volume: diverse but coherent, demanding but always clear. The individual essays are strong, but read as whole the book is even more powerful. It is required reading for any scholar working in the wide and complex field of literature and religion.' Andrew Tate, The Glass