Creating a New Saint: Incarnational Theology and Sara Maitland's Ancestral Truths
One author who attempts to successfully update the older lives of the saints is the Scottish writer Sara Maitland who has incorporated supernatural agents, including angels and saints, into her fiction and prose. Not only has she written non-fictional accounts of many saints, but she has also used h...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
|
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Oxford University Press
2005
|
| In: |
Literature and theology
Year: 2005, Volume: 19, Issue: 4, Pages: 355-366 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | One author who attempts to successfully update the older lives of the saints is the Scottish writer Sara Maitland who has incorporated supernatural agents, including angels and saints, into her fiction and prose. Not only has she written non-fictional accounts of many saints, but she has also used her fiction to present the interaction between human and divine reality in the context of modern beliefs. Her contemporary hagiography within the novel Ancestral Truths dramatises several individuals who aspire to holiness after lives previously characterised by sinfulness, immorality and falsehood. However, unlike earlier hagiography that inscribed saintly virtues as the conventional biblical ones, such as chastity, humility, charity and obedience, Maitland presents her characters within a distinctly twentieth-century milieu. They use their understanding of psychology and sexuality to insist on a God who celebrates material existence, who sees joy in sexual expression. Rather than accepting a God who is a paternal figure of accountability, they redefine Him as the author of Risk and Daring in an otherwise senseless universe. So radical is Maitland's notion of sainthood that, in stark contrast to medieval authors who presented saints who repudiated their earlier lives, she presents characters who maintain their outlaw and renegade status even at the end of her narratives. Her depictions invite readers to rethink notions of virtue, to explore the possibility that individuals perceived to be sinners could actually manifest holiness. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1477-4623 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Literature and theology
|
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/litthe/fri043 |