Esther Regina : a Bakhtinian reading / André LaCocque.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lacocque, André.

Series:

Rethinking theory

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Bible. Esther--Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bible.

Bakhtin, M. M. (Mikhail Mikhaĭlovich), 1895-1975.

Bakhtin, M. M.

Bible. Esther.

Bible as literature.

Carnival in literature.

Physical Description:

200 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Evanston, Ill. : Northwestern University Press, [2008]

Summary:

Readers and scholars often question the inclusion of the Book of Esther in the canon. Where, they wonder, do the book's flagrant displays of hatred, deceit, violence, and the antidotal grotesqueries of Purim figure in the biblical tradition? Such confusion, this book tells us, arises from a wrong appraisal of Esther's literary genre. Distinguished scriptural scholar André LaCocque draws on the lessons of Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin to reveal the true comedic nature of the story of Esther and Mordecai. In particular, LaCocque finds in the book's grotesque elements--from royal banquets that last a half-year to an improbable succession of coincidences and reversals of fortunes neutralizing a planned genocide--a natural fit with Bakhtin's description of the "carnivalesque." -- Bakhtin's rediscovery of the carnivalesque employs such key notions and categories as the dialogic, the novelistic, the chronotopic, the polyphonic, and authoring-as-creating. Using these and other Bakhtinian tools, LaCocque rereads Esther to show how the book's comedic mood is paradoxically proportional to the catastrophic predicament of the Jews. Here, as biblical theocentrism shifts to Judeocentrism, we see how the carnivalesque becomes subversive of the Establishment and liberating. In Esther, the underlying conviction is that Jewish survival is providential--and that anti-Semitism is anti-God. This is, as LaCocque tells us with a nod to Aristotle, a worthy lesson disguised as a "low genre."

Contents:

The literary genre(s) of the Book of Esther

The Book of Esther and the powers that be

The secularism of the Book of Esther

A trio of women: Vashti, Esther, Zeresh

In the background: Israel versus Amalek

Banqueting and festivities

The Book of Esther interprets and is interpreted

Otherness: the women and the Jews

Appendix: outline of the Book of Esther.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 179-191) and index.

ISBN:

9780810124585

0810124580

9780810124592

0810124599

OCLC:

154690254

Online:

Publisher description

Contributor biographical information