A Secular for Literary Studies. (June 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Seidel, Kevin
• Other Names: Jager Colin guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Christianity and literature. Volume 67:Number 3(2018)
• Page Start: 472
• Page End: 492
• Publication Date: 2018-06
• Subjects: novel -- secular -- Orhan Pamuk -- Marilynne Robinson; Christianity and literature -- Periodicals; Literature -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; 809.933823
• DOI: 10.1177/0148333117736197
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0148-3331

Abstract

This essay criticizes two prevailing ways of thinking about the relationship between the secular and the religious—the way of enmity and the way of paradox—and affirms a third, more open-ended approach to the secular that looks to literature for what William Connolly calls "mundane transcendence." The essay then shifts the focus of critical attention from the representation of religion in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead and Orhan Pamuk's Snow to their representation of "the secular."