John Updike’s Rabbit, Run: A Quest for a Spiritual Vocabulary in the Vacuum Left by Modernism
This article considers the powerful role of language and imaginative literature in cultural and self-formation. Drawing on Richard Rorty’s description of narrative forms as vehicles for meaning, I describe leading metaphors in representative literature of the Modern period. I suggest that Modernism...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2007
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| In: |
Religious studies and theology
Year: 2007, Volume: 26, Issue: 1, Pages: 25-44 |
| Further subjects: | B
John Updike
B Modernism |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This article considers the powerful role of language and imaginative literature in cultural and self-formation. Drawing on Richard Rorty’s description of narrative forms as vehicles for meaning, I describe leading metaphors in representative literature of the Modern period. I suggest that Modernism exhibits a cultural loss of meaning, and a "death of God" zeitgeist. Works of that period also show pessimism about erotic relationships. I proceed with a close reading of John Updike’s Rabbit, Run, which was written just as the Modern period closes. In Updike, the protagonist intuits a strong spirituality and finds rich erotic experience. But in the wake of Modernism’s spiritual vacuity, and erotic pessimism, the protagonist in Rabbit, Run desperately seeks a vocabulary to voice his intuitions which his own culture cannot sustain. |
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| ISSN: | 1747-5414 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Religious studies and theology
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1558/rsth.v26i1.25 |
