David Jasper

How language works in the worship of the church has been vigorously debated during the period of liturgical revision in the twentieth century coming at the end of what is known as the Liturgical Movement. Focussing upon the Church of England and the Anglican tradition, this book traces the history of ‘liturgical language’ as it begins in the early Church, but with particular emphasis upon the English Reformation liturgies, their background in the medieval Church and literature, and their long and varied life in the Church of England after 1662. Inter-disciplinary in scope, yet rooted in a literary approach, the volume provides a rigorous study of the effect of liturgy upon the theological and devotional life of the Church.

A Ritual Poetics

The Language of Liturgy

Continuing the work began in The Sacred Desert, David Jasper here turns his attention to the body, seeking a profound understanding of what it means to be in the flesh. A deeply autobiographical journey through disparate written texts (in literature, philosophy, theology and religion), art, and cinema, The Sacred Body rigorously and artfully pursues the body of the Christian tradition of "the Word made flesh"--a body torn and crucified, resurrected, and divinized, embracing both deep suffering and profound joy. Engaging ascetic traditions that began among fourth-century desert monastics, as well as George Herbert, Simone Weil, Meister Eckhart, James Joyce and others, David Jasper once again provides a bold, learned, and original theological exploration.

Asceticism in Religion, Literature, Art, and Culture

The Sacred Body

Bill Hall

Art & the Spiritual

Ramona Fotiade

Olivier Salazar-Ferrer

This book examines a number of landmark shifts in our account of the relationship between human and divine existence, as reflected through the perception of time and corporeal experience. Drawing together some of the best scholars in the field, this book provides a representative cross-section of influential trends in the philosophy of religion (e.g. phenomenology, existential thought, Biblical hermeneutics, deconstruction) that have shaped our understanding of the body in its profane and sacred dimensions as site of conflicting discourses on presence and absence, subjectivity and the death of the subject, mortality, resurrection and eternal life.

Phenomenological, Religious and Deconstructive Views on Living and Dying

Embodiment

S. Brent Plate

Imag(in)ing Otherness explores relationships between film and religion, aesthetics and ethics. The volume examines these relationships by viewing how otherness is imaged in film and how otherness alternately might be imagined. Drawing from a variety of films from differing religious perspectives--including Chan Buddhism, Hinduism, Native American religions, Christianity, and Judaism--the essays gathered in this volume examine the particular problems of "living together" when faced with the tensions brought out through the otherness of differing sexualities, ethnicities, genders, religions, cultures, and families.

Filmic Visions of Living Together

Imag(in)ing Otherness

George Newlands

Darlene Bird

The essays in this book represent ten years of the work of the Centre for the Study of Literature, Theology and the Arts in the University of Glasgow. Seemingly diverse, they are bound together by a common belief that theology flourishes in an interdisciplinary and transcultural environment. It cannot be an abstract concern, but is rooted in political circumstances, and responds to developments in society and the arts. That is why there are essays on film and contemporary artists like Mona Hatoum, as well as more traditional studies of theology read through and in literature. The Centre has always been an international meeting place, and contributions range well beyond the Western Christian, seeking new roots for theological thinking in the arts and culture of a postmodern world.

Essays from the Centre for the Study of Literature, Theology and the Arts, University of Glasgow

Believing in the Text

Ou Guang-an

How does one culture “read” another? This book is a series of conversations between a scholar from China and a scholar from the West, each reading texts from the other’s culture. One of the key issues is the nature of religion and what we understand by that term in a world in which ancient religious and customs seem to be dying or under threat. Does literature and religion offer the possibility of mutual understanding—or merely illustrate our differences? These conversations between scholars are also between friends. And that, too, is important.

A Dialogue between China and the West

Literature and Religion

Religion, Literature, Art and Culture

The Sacred Desert

Hermeneutics defines the rules used to search out the meaning of Scripture. This book assesses major Biblical interpreters & approaches to hermeneutics from the patristic period to the present day.

A Short Introduction to Hermeneutics

Robert Detweiler

Featuring a selection from over 80 key texts, this anthology aims to help the reader to understand the common origins of religious expression and of literature. The texts included cover classical literature, the Bible, English and European classics and contemporary works.

David Jasper

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