5Religion and Representation. (6th July 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Franke, William
• Is Part Of: Year's work in critical and cultural theory. Volume 26:Number 1(2018)
• Page Start: 86
• Page End: 105
• Publication Date: 2018-07-06
• Subjects: English literature -- Periodicals; Critical theory -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals; 820.9
• DOI: 10.1093/ywcct/mby005
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1077-4254

Abstract

Abstract: The very wide-ranging issues haunting the interface between religion and representation play themselves out with redoubled intensity in the specific field of Dante studies, to which each of the books reviewed this year is related. The relation varies from case to case: although all are books about Dante, their disciplinary matrices vary widely—from Italian studies to English literary history and from continental theory to theological criticism. At the aurora of the modern language traditions, Dante raises acutely the question of how to represent religious experience and reality in rhetorical forms and literary texts. He remains a focus for these crucial critical questions that have brought into swing a new dynamic, that is vigorous and sometimes even violent, in our postmodern era. After laying out briefly a frame presenting the recent theoretical and theological turn in Dante studies, the chapter examines four new books and delineates their contributions. The chapter consists of the following sections: 1. Dante Studies after the Theological Turn; 2. Heather Webb, Dante's Persons: An Ethics of the Transhuman ; 3. Tristan Kay, Dante's Lyric Redemption: Eros, Salvation, Vernacular Tradition ; 4. James Robinson, Joyce's Dante: Exile, Memory, and Community ; 5. Marco Maggi, Walter Benjamin e Dante: Una costellazione nello spazio delle immagini. Taken together, these books exemplify different approaches in literary criticism to representing religion and especially to what exceeds representation—the religious par excellence. The rubric 'Religion and Representation' is given a specific focus here around a classic author who remains a seminal source of critical speculation on the complex and vexed relations between religion and representation.