“We May be Through with the Past …”
Recurring themes and traditions within the biblical corpus have attracted much scholarship. This article uses P. T. Anderson’s Magnolia (1999) as a test case for the ways traditions may or may not interact, and what that means for ‘tradition history.’ While the film has many features which strike ma...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2016
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| In: |
Religion and the arts
Year: 2016, Volume: 20, Issue: 4, Pages: 459-490 |
| Further subjects: | B
the exodus
tradition history
methodology
intertextuality
film studies
Magnolia
frogs
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) |
| Summary: | Recurring themes and traditions within the biblical corpus have attracted much scholarship. This article uses P. T. Anderson’s Magnolia (1999) as a test case for the ways traditions may or may not interact, and what that means for ‘tradition history.’ While the film has many features which strike many viewers as biblical, the author-director denies prior knowledge of these connections. The film is analyzed in terms of structure, Anderson’s claimed sources, the American cultural context of the 1990s, and its biblical resonances. After assessing the import of these observations, the tradition history of Magnolia is compared to the tradition history of the exodus in the Hebrew Bible. Within the framework of attention to media contexts, the article concludes by noting the importance of authority, canon, and multiple lines of transmission. In so doing, our understanding of the transmission of traditions is problematized, and a broader, less text-centric paradigm is called for. |
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| Physical Description: | Online-Ressource |
| ISSN: | 1568-5292 |
| Contains: | In: Religion and the arts
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/15685292-02004003 |