What the Thunder Said: A Portrait of the Artist as a Trans-Secular Event
According to the dominant critical consensus, James Joyce's writings are secular, marking the absence or irrelevance of religion in modern life. This article challenges that position by arguing that Joyce's use of epiphany reworked Catholic concepts of transcendence and immanence, amid the...
| 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: |
2014
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| In: |
Literature and theology
Year: 2014, Volume: 28, Issue: 4, Pages: 457-475 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Electronic
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| Summary: | According to the dominant critical consensus, James Joyce's writings are secular, marking the absence or irrelevance of religion in modern life. This article challenges that position by arguing that Joyce's use of epiphany reworked Catholic concepts of transcendence and immanence, amid the contentious theological debates of the early 20th century, to craft a modernist religious experience, one directed at achieving spiritual meaning. I then show how the Joycean epiphany's way of shaping being and time remarkably anticipates Alain Badiou's and Slavoj Žižek's contemporary turn to religious forms of fashioning meaning in the idea of the Event. This article thus not only reframes Joyce's relationship to art's spiritual value, but also shows how the persistent recourse to religion for literary and political ends further complicates the idea of a secular modernity. |
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| ISSN: | 1477-4623 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Literature and theology
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/litthe/frt034 |