The Gospel According to the Novelist: Religious Scripture and Contemporary Fiction

✍ Scribed by Magdalena Maczynska

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2015
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 161
• Series: New Directions in Religion and Literature
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Why have so many prominent literary authors-from Philip Pullman and José Saramago to Michèle Roberts and Colm Tóibím-recently rewritten the canonical story of Jesus Christ? What does that say about our supposedly secular age? In this insightful study, Magdalena Maczynska defines and examines the genre of scriptural metafiction: novels that not only transform religious texts but also draw attention to these transformations. In addition to providing rich examples and close readings, Maczynska positions literary studies within interdisciplinary debates about religion and secularity. Her book demonstrates a surprising turn of events: even as contemporary novelists deconstruct the traditional categories of “secular” and “sacred” writing, they open up new spaces for scripture in contemporary culture.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Title
Series
Half Title
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Sly evangelists: Historiographic meta-gospels
The evangelist as historian
The evangelist as novelist
The novelist as evangelist
2 Other voices: Alternative point-of-view gospels
The gospels of Mary
The silent years
Quadruple truths
3 Other realities: Science fictional and metamorphic gospels
Time-traveling saviors
Texts under erasure
4 Inquisitive scholars: Philological and archaeological gospels
Inquisitive scholars
Intrepid discoverers
Elusive archives
Conclusion
Notes
Works cited
Index