Religion, Literature and the Imagination

Mark Knight is Reader in English Literature at Roehampton University, UK. His books include Chesterton and Evil (Fordham University Press, 2004), Biblical Religion and the Novel, 1700-2000 (co-edited with Thomas Woodman, Ashgate, 2006), and Nineteenth-Century Religion and Literature: An Introduction (co-written with Emma Mason, OUP, 2007). With Emma Mason he is editing the new book series New Directions in Religion and Literature for Continuum. Louise Lee is a doctoral student at Roehampton University, UK.

• Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction (Mark Knight and Louise Lee, University of Roehampton, UK); 2. Reception History and the Study of the Bible (Chris Rowland, Oxford University, UK); 3. De Quincey and the Bible (Jon Roberts, Liverpool University, UK); 4. Ritual, Affection and Affiliation in Israel Zangwill's Children of the Ghetto and The Melting Pot (Jo Carruthers, Bristol University, UK); 5. Deity in Dispatches: Charles Kingsley and the Crimean Roots of Muscular Christianity (Louise Lee, Roehampton University, UK); 6. "The Vagaries of Religious Experience": Religious Fiction and Critical Theory (Kevin McCarron, Roehampton University, UK); 7. Geoffrey Hill and the Problem of Modern Religious Poetry (Kevin Hart, University of Virginia, USA); 8. "The Oldest Dream of All": Visions of Heaven in Contemporary Fiction (Andrew Tate, Lancaster University, USA); 9. Walter Benjamin's History of Nowhere (John Schad, Lancaster University, UK); 10. The Deconstruction of Christianity: From the Hand of God to the Hand of Man (Arthur Bradley, Lancaster University, UK); 11. Literature, Theory and Religion after Religion (Robert Eaglestone, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK); 12. Saving Literary Criticism (Mark Knight, Roehampton University, UK, and Emma Mason, Warwick University, UK); 13. Divine Invasion (Geoffrey Hartman, Yale University, USA); Index.

"This volume brings together an extraordinary range of writing on poets from Ezekiel to Blake, on novelists from Kingsley to Coupland and on theorists from Adorno to Derrida, all of whom can be seen to rescue literary criticism from the grip of positivism and materialism while illustrating Hartman's suggestion that religion remains more alive in the arts than in the pages of more orthodox theologians." - Professor Terry Wright, School of English, Newcastle University, UK