The central themes of this collection of essays are the mystery of time past, present and future, and the problem of redemption. They are concerned with modern literature, with the threat of meaninglessness in the postmodern condition, and with the possibility of salvation. In an age of deferral and difference, this book addresses itself to eschatology and apocalypse, and redemption in, through, but particularly of, time itself. Hell and madness are never far away, yet the refiguration of time and the breaking in of the transcendent continue to suggest theological possibilities beyond the wastelands of the twentieth century. To those possibilities we look in hope.

In 1879, the late medieval poem now known as The Lay Folks' Mass Book - a guide to the Mass -- was edited for the Early English Text Society by Canon Thomas Frederick Simmons. It remains the standard edition of what, to modern tastes, can seem a simple work of conventional Middle English devotion. Yet, as this book shows, the poem had a remarkable afterlife. The authors demonstrate how Simmons' interest in and presentation of the text was related profoundly to contemporary concerns and heated debates about worship in the Church of England, at a time when Anglican clergymen could be imprisoned for their ritual practices. Simmons, educated at Oxford during the height of the Oxford Movement, was recognised by contemporaries as a leading authority on liturgy, a topic that troubled prime ministers as well as archbishops, and the authors bring out the ways in which Simmons himself used his medievalist researches as the basis for what was to be the most important attempt at Prayer Book revision between the Reformation and the twentieth century.

This exploration of the relationship between literature and religion adopts a series of different strategies and perspectives, aiming to provide an introduction to the variety of ways in which literature, literary theory and theology are related. The doctrine of the Resurrection, morality and ethics, aesthetics, hermeneutics and issues of intentionality and referentiality are all discussed in the belief that, in literature, we glimpse at times the fulfilment of our nature, cast in the imaginative genius of great art and continuing to persuade us of the value and ultimate truth of the theological enterprise.

This volume is the fourth instalment of the 'Report on the state of the European Union' series. Its shows that if the EU does not want to be ruled by crisis any longer, it must invest in sustainability, political, economic, social and environmental. Europe must turn this elusive and ever-threatening 'crisis' into a chosen and meaningful transition.

For some, the Bible and literature are at odds. The Bible, it is argued, is not properly literature but a piece of outmoded fiction that ought not to be studied or taken seriously. However, the relationship and impact between the Bible and, in turn, proceeding literature cannot be overlooked. The Bible is an ever-fruitful source for creativity that has contributed to all the great achievements of Western thought, writing, and artistry for the last two millennia.With Scripture and Literature, David Jasper has compiled forty years of his writings on the relationship between the Bible, literature, and art. These writings are interdisciplinary in nature and are not the work of a specialist in biblical scholarship. Rather, while acknowledging the Bible as a sacred text in more than one religious tradition, they recognize the Bible as literature in conversations with other literary works and traditions as well as the visual arts. During the forty years which these essays span, enormous changes have taken place in our world. Postmodernism has come and gone; issues in feminism and gender are now acutely, and properly, with us; and the world has become much more of a global village, despite its many divisions. On the other hand, and at the same time, it is remarkable how little has changed, and the reader will find that some older pieces remain relevant and necessary today. Parts of the book deal broadly with questions of translation, rhetoric, war, and evil, while others focus on specific writers and artists from J. M. W. Turner to the English novelist Jim Crace. Yet behind Scripture and Literature lies a lifetime of careful thought and teaching of the Bible and literature. In the end, Jasper synthesizes his work, offering some reflections on pedagogy and the changes that have occurred since the 1980s up to the present day.

This volume is both a tribute to and study of the French economist Jean-Paul Fitoussi. Fitoussi's pluralistic scholarship has shaped modern macroeconomics, political economy, economics of inequality and, more recently, the economics of sustainability.

Contemporary thought is marked by heated debates about the character, purpose and form of religious thinking and its relation to a range of ideals: spiritual, moral, aesthetic, political and ecological, to name the obvious. This book addresses the interrelation between theological thinking and the complex and diverse realms of human ideals. What are the ideals appropriate to our moment in human history, and how do these ideals derive from or relate to theological reflection in our time? In Theological Reflection and the Pursuit of Ideals internationally renowned scholars from a range of disciplines (physics, art, literary studies, ethics, comparative religion, history of ideas, and theology) engage with these crucial questions with the intention of articulating a new and historically appropriate vision of theological reflection and the pursuit of ideals for our global times.

The Oxford Handbook of English Literature and Theology is a defining volume of essays in which leading international scholars apply an interdisciplinary approach to the long and evolving relationship between English Literature and Theology. The volume first offers a chronological account of key moments in the formation of the tradition; goes on to demonstrate literary ways of reading the Bible, theological ways of reading literature, and literary conceptions of theological texts; and finally explores the great themes that have preoccupied the Jewish and Christian traditions. Framing editorial essays describe the history, the cultural implications, and the methodological issues of this now popular interdisciplinary study, before speculating as to its possible futures in a postmodern, multicultural world.

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.

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.

Examining the roots of the relationship between literature and theology, this book offers the first serious attempt to probe the deep theological purposes of the study of literature. Through an exploration of themes of evil, forgiveness, sacrament and what it means to be human, David Jasper draws from international research and discussions on literature and theology and employs an historical and profoundly personal journey through the later part of the last century up to the present time. Combining fields such as bible and literature, poetry and sacrament, this book sheds new light on how Christian theology seeks to remain articulate in our global, secular and multi-faith culture.

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.

Contemporary thought is marked by heated debates about the character, purpose and form of religious thinking and its relation to a range of ideals: spiritual, moral, aesthetic, political and ecological, to name the obvious. This book addresses the interrelation between theological thinking and the complex and diverse realms of human ideals. What are the ideals appropriate to our moment in human history, and how do these ideals derive from or relate to theological reflection in our time? In Theological Reflection and the Pursuit of Ideals internationally renowned scholars from a range of disciplines (physics, art, literary studies, ethics, comparative religion, history of ideas, and theology) engage with these crucial questions with the intention of articulating a new and historically appropriate vision of theological reflection and the pursuit of ideals for our global times.

Examining the roots of the relationship between literature and theology, this book offers the first serious attempt to probe the deep theological purposes of the study of literature. Through an exploration of themes of evil, forgiveness, sacrament and what it means to be human, David Jasper draws from international research and discussions on literature and theology and employs an historical and profoundly personal journey through the later part of the last century up to the present time. Combining fields such as bible and literature, poetry and sacrament, this book sheds new light on how Christian theology seeks to remain articulate in our global, secular and multi-faith culture.

Margaret Oliphant (1828-97) had a prolific literary career that spanned almost fifty years. She wrote some 98 novels, fifty or more short stories, twenty-five works of non-fiction, including biographies and historic guides to European cities, and more than three hundred periodical articles. This is the most ambitious critical edition of her work.

Margaret Oliphant Wilson Oliphant (1828-97) had a wide-ranging and prolific literary career that spanned almost fifty years. She wrote some 98 novels, over fifty short stories, twenty-five works of non-fiction, including biographies and historic guides to European cities, and more than three hundred periodical articles. As the self-styled 'general utility woman' for Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, often contributing both fiction and literary reviews to the same issue, she became a major critical voice for her generation. Her influence, usually cast on the side of 'the common reader', was such that it provoked fellow novelists such as Anthony Trollope, Henry James and Thomas Hardy to savage fictional portraits by way of retaliation. The scholarly interest that her work now receives is hampered by difficulty in accessing the full range of her oeuvre: whilst her most famous fictional series, 'The Chronicles of Carlingford', together with a handful of her tales of the supernatural, have gone in and out of print in recent years, the bulk of her fiction and critical writing remains uncollected. This is the most ambitious scholarly critical edition of Oliphant's work ever undertaken.