2015 Lionel Basney Award Citation

Announcement 2015 Lionel Basney Award Citation The Conference on Christianity and Literature is pleased to name Emily Griesinger the recipient of the 2015 Lionel Basney Award for the best refereed article published in Volume 64 of Christianity & Literature. Griesinger’s article, ‘‘Religious Belief in a Secular Age: Literary Modernism and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway’’ adds to a growing body of scholarship on the religious influences and priorities in literary modernism. In particular, she deftly and elegantly traces Virginia Woolf’s complicated negotiation with Christian tropes and theological concepts. On one hand, Woolf aggressively asserted her atheism, and her criticism of Christianity came out in very explicit ways, especially in her condemnation of T. S. Eliot’s conversion. On the other hand, Woolf surprisingly seemed drawn to certain Christian tropes, especially in Mrs. Dalloway, where Clarissa is often interpreted as a kind of ‘‘Christ figure.’’ Further, Woolf also utilized elements of Christian mysticism in her books, describing ‘‘moments of being’’ that drew their antecedents from the tradition of Western mysticism. Griesinger aptly describes this complicated negotiation, claiming, ‘‘What [Woolf] offers instead is a religion based on fleeting ‘moments of being’ . . . during which her characters (and the reader) gain access to a visionary realm beyond or within the material world . . . Woolf ‘renegotiates ’ the divine in ways that reenchant a ‘godless’ secular world.’’ Griesinger insinuates that this secular world is not as godless as it would like to acknowledge. At the same time, Griesinger’s work explores what gets lost when religious elements become removed from their broader theological context. Indeed, the author suggests that Woolf raises problems or questions in her use of religion and mysticism that can only be answered by Christian theological answers. Griesinger’s article therefore takes the frequent recognition of Woolf’s religiosity one step further by pushing her indebtedness to Christianity, and asking with renewed urgency how Christian fragments shape the carved contours of Woolf’s visions. For exploring the persistent traces of the divine in modern literature with insight, erudition, and intelligence, Emily Griesinger wins the 2015 Lionel Basney Award. Christianity & Literature 2016, Vol. 65(4) 541 ! The Author(s) 2016 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/ journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0148333116651790 cal.sagepub.com ...