Description |
1 online resource (xviii, 270 pages) |
Contents |
Introduction -- Dislocating the sacred : the Protestant voice ; The Protestant voice -- A Protestant trio : Davies, MacLennan, and Laurence -- Imprisonment and liberation -- How is Canadian literature "religious"? -- The Protestant principle in English-Canadian fiction -- A tentative conclusion -- Relocating the sacred : the human ground of transcendence ; Eternity and transcendence -- "Eternity" in Callaghan and MacLennan -- The ordinary and the sacred in Mitchell and Munro -- Divining the depths in Davies, Laurence, and Atwood -- Conclusion -- Nature as the locale of the sacred ; Native and Christian attitudes -- Some typical Canadian views -- Geography over history -- A new direction -- In quest of the sacred : the canoe trip ; The quest pattern -- States of the quest -- Transformative quest and Canadian character -- The canoe trip as initiation rite -- Conclusion -- Sacred Death : the Belcher Islands Massacre ; Introduction -- Geographical and religious backgrounds -- Narrative of the events -- The contemporary reaction to the murders -- Analysis -- A personal epilogue -- Theodicy and the sacred : A.M. Klein and Hugh MacLennan ; Parallel dislocations -- 'The Second Scroll' as theodicy -- 'The Watch that Ends the Night' and selfhood -- The everyman and the self -- Chaos into cosmos -- Love and the Sacred : the ambiguities of Morley Callaghan's 'Such Is My Beloved' ; Callaghan's "Certain Perceptions" -- The two conflicting realms -- The song of songs : love and the sacred -- Conclusion : incarnational humanism -- Sacred passages : Native symbols in Atwood and Engel ; The female initiation pattern -- Atwood's 'Surfacing' -- Engel's 'Bear' -- Conclusion -- Nordicity and the sacred : the journeys of Thomas York and Aritha van Herk ; The fugitive -- The spiritual quest -- The return to the south in 'Desireless' -- 'No End to This Road' : Aritha van Herk -- Mutuality and the sacred : Joy Kogawa ; From divine abandonment to human solidarity -- Bread and stones and names in 'Obasan' -- From silence to communion -- Conclusion -- Conclusion |
Summary |
Where do Canadians encounter religious meaning? Not where they used to! In ten lively and wide-ranging essays, William Closson James examines various derivations of the sacred in contemporary Canadian culture. Most of the essays focus on the religious aspects of modern Canadian English fiction -- for example, in essays on the fiction of Hugh MacLennan, Morley Callaghan, Margaret Atwood and Joy Kogawa. But James also explores other, non-literary events and activities in which Canadians have found something transcendant or revelatory. Each of the chapters in Locations of the Sacred can be read independently as a discrete analysis of its subject. Taken as a whole, the essays make up a powerful argument for a new way of looking at the religious in contemporary Canada -- not in the traditional ways of being religious, but in activities and locations previously thought to be "secular." Thus, the domains and modes of the religious are expanded, not restricted |
Bibliography |
Includes notes at chapter ends, bibliographical references (pages 245-264), and index |
Notes |
Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL |
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English |
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Print version record |
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digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL |
Subject |
Spirituality in literature.
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Religion in literature.
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Religion and culture -- Canada
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ART -- Reference.
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ART -- Performance.
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Religion and culture
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Religion in literature
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Spirituality in literature
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Canada
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Genre/Form |
e-books.
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Criticism, interpretation, etc.
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Livres numériques.
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Form |
Electronic book
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ISBN |
0585261873 |
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9780585261874 |
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9780889202931 |
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0889202931 |
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0889207577 |
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9780889207578 |
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1280925043 |
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9781280925047 |
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9786610925049 |
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6610925046 |
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