In this Book
- Textual Intimacy: Autobiography and Religious Identities
- Book
- 2012
- Published by: University of Virginia Press
- Series: Studies in Religion and Culture
Given its affinity with questions of identity, autobiography offers a way into the interior space between author and reader, especially when writers define themselves in terms of religion. In his exploration of this "textual intimacy," Wesley Kort begins with a theorization of what it means to say who one is and how one's self-account as a religious person stands in relation to other forms of self-identification. He then provides a critical analysis of autobiographical texts by nine contemporary American writers—including Maya Angelou, Philip Roth, and Anne Lamott—who give religion a positive place in their accounts of who they are. Finally, in disclosing his own religious identity, Kort concludes with a meditation on several meanings of the word assumption.
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- pp. ix-xii
- Introduction
- pp. 1-9
- I. Theoretical
- pp. 9-10
- 1. Telling You Who I Am
- pp. 1136-48
- 2. Narrative and Self-Accounts
- pp. 37-57
- 3. Disclosing a Religious Identity
- pp. 58-84
- II. Critical
- pp. 85-86
- 4. Religious Debtors
- pp. 87-118
- 5. Religious Dwellers
- pp. 119-146
- 6. Religious Diviners
- pp. 147-174
- III. Personal
- pp. 175-176
- 8. On My Own: Taking on a Religious Identity
- pp. 197-218