Conspicuous bodies : provincial belief and the making of Joyce and Rushdie / Jean Kane.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kane, Jean, 1955-

Series:

Literature, religion, and postsecular studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Joyce, James, 1882-1941--Criticism and interpretation.

Joyce, James.

Joyce, James, 1882-1941--Religion.

Rushdie, Salman--Criticism and interpretation.

Rushdie, Salman.

Joyce, James, 1882-1941.

Criticism and interpretation.

Rushdie, Salman--Religion.

Religion.

Faith in literature.

Human body in literature.

Human body--Religious aspects.

Human body.

Identity (Psychology) in literature.

Physical Description:

x, 209 pages ; 24 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Other Title:

Provincial belief and the making of Joyce and Rushdie

Place of Publication:

Columbus Ohio State University Press, 2014.

Summary:

"In Conspicuous Bodies: Provincial Belief and the Making of Joyce and Rushdie, Jean Kane re-examines the literature of James Joyce and Salman Rushdie from a post-secularist perspective, arguing that their respective religions hold critical importance in their works. Though Joyce and Rushdie were initially received as cosmopolitans, both authors subsequently reframed their public images and aligned themselves instead with a provincial religious identity, which emphasized the interconnections between religious devotion and embodiment. At the same time, both Joyce and Rushdie managed to resist the doctrinal content of their religions. Conspicuous Bodies presents Joyce as a founder and Rushdie as an inheritor of a distinctive discourse of belief about the importance of physical bodies and knowledge in religious practice. In doing so, it moves the reception of Joyce and Rushdie away from what previous critics have emphasized-away from questions of aesthetics and from a narrow understanding of belief-and instead questions the assumption that belief should be segregated from matters of physicality and knowledge. Kane reintroduces the concept of spiritual embodiment in order to expand our understanding of what counts as spiritual agency in non-western and minority literatures"-- Provided by publisher.

"This monograph, the first to link James Joyce and Salman Rushdie, asserts that religion in the works of these authors figures prominently and critically, although it is territory seldom trod by other literary scholars. To advance her argument, Kane demonstrates how each author, initially received as cosmopolitan, took pains to establish his public image by establishing his affiliation with an Irish Catholic or and Indian muslim identity. at the same time, the authors' fiction increasingly exploited spiritual techniques, manipulating their insider-outsider positions through liberal Christian protocols from which the anthropological category 'religion' itself emerged"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Chapter 1 Joyce's Conversion and the Counterdiscipline of Drink 8

Chapter 2 The Canonization of Salman Rushdie: Mythic Midnight's Children and Hindu-Muslim Embodiment 41

Chapter 3 Spirits Discipline Ulysses 69

Chapter 4 Muslim Simulation and the Limits of the "Star Text" 97

Chapter 5 Embodied Panic: Modernist "Religion" in the Controversies over Ulysses and The Satanic Verses 120

Chapter 6 The Religion of Celebrity 141.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 184-200) and index.

ISBN:

9780814212608

0814212603

0814293646

9780814293645

OCLC:

879537580