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"Crucifixion Fiction."
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John Brown's Spirit: The Abolitionist Aesthetic of Emancipatory Martyrdom in Early Antilynching Protest Literature
Before his execution in 1859, the radical abolitionist John Brown wrote a series of prison letters that – along with his death itself – helped to cement the abolitionist aesthetic of emancipatory martyrdom. This article charts the adaptation of that aesthetic in antilynching protest literature during the decades that followed. It reveals Brown's own presence in antilynching speeches, sermons, articles, and fiction, and the endurance of the emancipatory martyr symbol that he helped to inaugurate. Between the 1880s and the 1920s, black and white writers imagined lynching's ritual violence as a crucifixion and drew upon the John Brown aesthetic of emancipatory martyrdom, including Frederick Douglass, Stephen Graham, James Weldon Johnson, Walter White, black Baptist ministers, and black educators and journalists. Fusing martyrdom and messianism, these antilynching writers made the black Christ of their texts an avenging liberatory angel. The testamentary body of this messianic martyr figure marks the nation for violent retribution. Turning the black Christ into a Brown-like prophetic sign of God's vengeful judgment, antilynching writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries warned of disaster, demanded a change of course, challenged white southern notions of redemption, and insisted that African Americans must reemancipate themselves and redeem the nation.
Journal Article
OVERTONES OF ISAAC AND JESUS IN MODERN HEBREW NARRATIVE
In the context of a basic relationship between the Akedah (binding of Isaac), together with the tradition it generated at different periods, and the account of Jesus' crucifixion in the Gospels, it is interesting to note certain exemplars of Modern Hebrew prose fiction which, in some way and on some level, reflect both sacrificial narratives. While the primary accent in such works clearly revolves around the binding of Isaac and its interpretation, one also finds in the same texts either explicit mention of, or allusion to elements of the crucifixion accounts. The literary compositions discussed in the present article, by Kabak, Oz, Hazaz, and Appelfeld, span a number of decades and display very different thrusts and emphases. What they share is a literary utilization of the innate power of both sacrificial traditions in ways that have enriched Modern Hebrew writing. In these compositions and in the contexts, in which the authors evoked both traditions, they acquire new life and meaning.
Journal Article
Gnostic Magic in \Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell\
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell has been lauded since its publication in 2005 for its style, imagination, and comedy, but has not been interpreted as primarily a novel of ideas or philosophical speculation. I interpret Susanna Clarke's novel as advancing a type of Gnostic mysticism that exposes the limitations of orthodoxy and of institutionalized spirituality. This Gnosticism is expressed in three ways: as an intuition of the divine source within the self; in a Manichean worldview, pitting a corrupt, natural world against a pure, unfallen world; and finally in the representation of an antagonistic trinity rather than the unified trinity of the Orthodox Church. Through the recurring motifs of sacrifice and crucifixion, the novel conveys a non-egoistic solution to the violence and rivalry of the modern world.
Journal Article
MICHELLE HARTMAN, Jesus, Joseph and Job: Reading Rescriptings of Religious Figures in Lebanese Women's Fiction, Literaturen im kontext, Band 12 (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2002). Pp. 177. EUR39.00 cloth
The first part deals with theoretical and methodological considerations and is divided into three chapters dealing with: (1) reading literature in contexts to show the multiplicity of Lebanese identities linked to language and multi-confessionalism and emphasizing the importance of hybridity in a society in which conflicting elements often co-exist; (2) methodological explorations that define the place in which Hartman's theoretical approach fits within the overall critical approaches in the field of Middle Eastern literature, from early scholars such as von Grunebaum to more recent ones such as Malti-Douglas, thus enabling Hartman to see métissage (as defined by Lionnet), which is central to her critical approach in that she combines elements from many locations; and (3) religious rescripting in secular literary works, which provides fascinating references to authors such as Mahmud Darwish, who uses images of Christ and crucifixion in his poetry, and Assia Djebar's Loin de Médine (Far from Medina), who rewrites women into the life of the Prophet, underlining their contribution and giving them their due importance.
Journal Article
The Protagonists’ Love After Death in Egypt
In the previous chapters I showed that during the novel the protagonists move from a merely physical relationship to an experience of love focused on their mutual fidelity, in which spirituality and mutuality are additional features. In this chapter, I will point out the most profound level of this trajectory: the protagonists’ striving towards a love which will continue after death. This feature is introduced in theEphesiacathrough a depiction of Egypt that unfolds during the course of the novel.¹
To begin with, the end of Apollo’s oracle introduces Egypt as an utopian land (§ 5.2) and, then, in
Book Chapter
\Live from Golgotha\: Gore Vidal and the Problem of Satiric Reinscription
Queer theorizing about the constructed nature of sexuality and poststructuralist theorizing about the discursive nature of history emphasize the manner in which satire reinscribes as it destabilizes. This essay explores these themes focussing specifically on Gore Vidal's critique in Live from Golgotha of Christianity's claims to absolute truth and its attitudes toward sexuality.
Journal Article