European Literature and Theology in the Twentieth Century: Ends of Time PDF
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EUROPEAN LITERATURE AND THEOLOGY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Studies in Literature and Religion General Editor: David Jasper, Director, Centre for the Study of Literature and Theology, the University of Durham This series of volumes will provide an interdisciplinary introduction to the study of literature and religion, concerned with the fundamentally important issues of the imagination, literary perceptions and an understanding of poetics for theology and religious studies and the underlying religious implications in so much literature and literary criticism. RELIGIOUS AESTHETICS: A Theological Study of Making and Meaning Frank Burch Brown BREAKING THE FALL: Religious Readings of Contemporary Fiction Robert Detweiler THEATRE AND INCARNATION Max Harris THE STUDY OF LITERATURE AND RELIGION: An Introduction David Jasper EUROPEAN LITERATURE AND THEOLOGY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: Ends of Time David Jasper and Colin Crowder (editors) LANGUAGE AND THE WORSHIP OF THE CHURCH David Jasper and R. C. D. Jasper (editors) PITY AND TERROR: Christianity and Tragedy Ulrich Simon Further titles in preparation Series Standing Order If you would like to receive future titles in this series as they are published, you can make use of our standing order facility. To place a standing order please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address and the name of the series. Please state with which title you wish to begin your standing order. (If you live outside the United Kingdom we may not have the rights for your area, in which case we will forward your order to the publisher concerned.) Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG21 2XS, England. European Literature and Theology in the Twentieth Century Ends of time Edited by David Jasper Director, Centre for the Study of Literature and Theology University of Durham and Colin Crowder Lecturer in Systematic Theology University of Durham M MACMILLAN ©The Macmillan Press Ltd 1990 Editorial matter and selection© David Jasper and Colin Crowder 1990 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1990 978-0-333-51666-9 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or •mder the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 33--4 Alfred Place, London WC1E 7DP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1990 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LT O Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG212XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world Typeset by Vine & Gorfin Ltd Exmouth, Devon British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data European literature and theology in the 20th century: ends of time - (Studies in literature and religion). 1. European literatures, ca 1850-1974. Special themes: Religion - Critical I. Jasper, David, 1951- II. Crowder, Colin III. Series 809'.93382 ISBN 978-1-349-38939-1 ISBN 978-0-230-37950-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230379503 Contents General Editor's Preface vii Introduction viii List of the Contributors x 1 Music, Madness and Mephistopheles: Art and Nihilism 1 in Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus George Pattison 2 The Appropriation of Dostoevsky in the Early 15 Twentieth Century: Cult, Counter-cult and Incarnation Colin Crowder 3 After Apocalypse: Some Elements in Late Lawrence 34 Donald Mackenzie 4 Wyndham Lewis on Time 56 Martin ]arrett-Kerr, CR 5 Rewriting The Waste Land 70 Michael Edwards 6 T. S. Eliot: Poetry, Silence and the Vision of God 86 Peter Walker 7 The Very Dead of Winter: Notes Towards an Enquiry 105 into English Poetry after Eliot Michael Alexander 8 Visions of Hell: Lowry and Beckett 117 Francis Doherty 9 Samuel Beckett's Negative Way: Intimations of the 129 Via Negativa in his Late Plays MariusBuning v VI Contents 10 Redemption and Narrative: Ref iguration of Time in 143 Postmodern Literature Irena Makarushka 11 Apocalyptic Fiction and the End(s) of Realism 153 Robert Detweiler Index 184 General Editor's Preface This collection of essays is very much of and for its time. It traces the literature of the twentieth century in Europe through modernism and postmodernism to the point when the crucial question cannot be avoided: how does theology respond to the moment of the apparent collapse of coherence in language, meaning and reference, to the denial of logocentricity and the radical suspicion cast upon the whole Western metaphysical tradition? The essays are concerned with literature rather than with theological debate as such. They represent a wide spectrum of views and religious opinion. And if hell, madness and apocalypse are never far away, there also remains the vision of God and redemption, recognisable within the sense of endings and wasted time. David Jasper vn Introduction The papers in this volume were rea d at the Fourth National Conference on Literature and Religion, held in Durham University, England in September 1988. Entitled Where The Wasteland Ends: European Literature and Theology in the Twentieth Century, the conference addressed itself to a number of themes arising from the cross-disciplinary intellectual and spiritual ferment of modern times. Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future And time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present All time is unredeemable. The opening lines of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets indicate the central themes of this collection of essays: the mystery of time, past, present and future, and the problem of redemption. Eliot's own wrestling with these questions, both in The Waste Land and Four Quartets (and in an important sense, as Michael Edwards shows in his paper, in the transition between them), is intrinsically significant; but it is also a sign of the artistic and theological complexity of the twentieth century. The modern struggle for a redeemed present, a centre that will hold, has demanded a strenuous grappling with both past and future: to settle accounts with literary and religious forerunners (as Eliot attempted to do), to appropriate their meanings in conditions which threaten to be meaningless, is to heighten the questions of future, of eschatology and apocalypse. Meaning seems to be endlessly deferred, yet the transcendent may continue to break in, or simply (like Lawrence's Great God) ever slip away below our horizon. Within the postmodern condition appropriation and apocalypse remain the guiding, mutually defining themes of this book. In our own times we seem to encounter the ends of time. First, there is the concern with apocalypse - the apocalypse now experienced as the end of time, but an end which is also a beginning vm Introduction IX in the realm of origins. Second, there is the sense -in postmodern ism - of the end of 'time' as a governing idea, a traditional category lost but perhaps to be 'refigured': time redeemed in and through creative art. Third, there is the idea of time's end as its telos, its purpose, its transcendent goal. The collection maintains a dialectic between the closing of time - even of the concept itself- and its opening up, between closure and disclosure. And this dialectic pivots on the possibility of redemp tion: in, through, but especially of, time itself. Colin Crowder David Jasper
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