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Mason, Emma (2022) Reading Christian experience. Modern Language Quarterly: A Journal of Literary History, 83 (4). pp. 521-537. doi:10.1215/00267929-10088744 ISSN 0026-7929.
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1215/00267929-10088744
Abstract
The radicalism of Christianity is often underplayed in literary studies by scholars who perceive its theology as politically suspect and inflexible. Yet an unwillingness to engage with Christian theology and experience produces critical misreadings of literary texts that reveal Christianity’s doctrines and ideas as anything but myopic. This essay explores the doctrine of kenosis as integral to Christianity’s compassionate vision in the work of two writers associated with the nineteenth-century Catholic revival: Christina Rossetti and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Kenosis describes Christ’s becoming human as a temporary letting go of his divinity; for Rossetti and Hopkins, this models a way of being and thinking in which the subject is untied from an ego desirous of control and power. Both writers consequently embraced the interdependence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the Trinity as a way of conceptualizing faith through shared humility and weakness. This approach to the self, the world, and God is an important one to identify in Christian texts, but it also exemplifies a Christian way of thinking more broadly attuned to the depiction of vulnerability and introspection in literature and culture.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
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| Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BL Religion B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BR Christianity B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BT Doctrinal Theology |
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > English and Comparative Literary Studies | ||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Incarnation , Trinity , Theology, Doctrinal, Feminist theology, Christianity and literature | ||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Modern Language Quarterly: A Journal of Literary History | ||||||
| Publisher: | Duke University Press | ||||||
| ISSN: | 0026-7929 | ||||||
| Official Date: | 1 December 2022 | ||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 83 | ||||||
| Number: | 4 | ||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 521-537 | ||||||
| DOI: | 10.1215/00267929-10088744 | ||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||
| Copyright Holders: | Copyright © 2022 by University of Washington | ||||||
| Date of first compliant deposit: | 9 May 2022 | ||||||
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 9 March 2023 | ||||||
| Related URLs: |
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