Invisible Conversations: Religion in the Literature of America

Contents

v = Contents Introduction by Roger Lundin 1 Part 1 Religion and American Fiction 1 Finding a Prose for God: Religion and American Fiction 19 Denis Donoghue 2 American Literature and/as Spiritual Inquiry 39 Lawrence Buell Part 2 Religion and American Poetry 3 Variety as Religious Experience: The Poetics of the Plain Style 49 Elisa New 4 Keeping the Metaphors Alive: American 63 Poetry and Transformation Barbara Packer Part 3 Literature, Religion, and the African American Experience 5 Genres of Redemption: African Americans, the Bible, 69 and Slavery from Lemuel Haynes to Frederick Douglass Mark A. Noll 6 Balm in Gilead: Memory, Mourning, and Healing 83 in African American Autobiography Albert J. Raboteau 7 The Race for Faith: Justice, Mercy, and the Sign 101 of the Cross in African American Literature Katherine Clay Bassard 8 Forms of Redemption 121 John Stauffer Part 4 Literature, Religion, and American Public Life 9 Hamlet without the Prince: 133 The Role of Religion in Postwar Nonfiction Alan Wolfe 10 “The Only Permanent State”: 149 Belief and the Culture of Incredulity Andrew Delbanco Part 5 Theology and American Literature 11 How the Church Became Invisible: 159 A Christian Reading of American Literary Tradition Stanley Hauerwas and Ralph C. Wood 12 “The Play of the Lord”: On the Limits of Critique 187 Roger Lundin Notes 195 Index 219 vi Contents ...