Introduction / Matthew J. Smith, Azusa Pacific University& Caleb D. Spencer, Azusa Pacific University -- 1. Believing: Postsecular Belief and Unbelief in Marilynne Robinson's Home and James Wood's The Book Against God / Lori Branch, University of Iowa -- 2. Benediction: Shakespeare's Post-Secular Choreography of Hope and Healing / Julia Reinhard Lupton, University of California, Irvine -- 3. Exercise: Poetry as Spiritual Exercise: On A. R. Ammons / Kevin Hart, University of Virginia -- 4. Fantasy: Superstition Fiction and Magic Revival in the Euro-American West and China / Zhange Ni, Virginia Polytechnic University -- 5. Gift: The (Im)possible Conditions of Grace in Melville's Fiction / Tae Sung, California Baptist University -- 6. Guidance: Understanding Providence in George MacDonald's Phantastes / Mark Knight, Lancaster University -- 7. Idolatry: Power, Meaning, and Violence in Conrad and Hesse / Larry D. Bouchard, University of Virginia -- 8. Interruption: Conversion as Event in Paul of Tarsus and Paul of Burgos / Ryan Szpiech, University of Michigan -- 9. Kindness: King Lear and Buddhism / Unhae Langis, Independent Scholar -- 10. Metanoia: Harriet Beecher Stowe's Artful Apprehension of Conversion in Uncle Tom's Cabin / John Gatta, Sewanee, The University of the South -- 11. One: Poetic Love in Ibn 'Arabi / Jeffrey Sacks, University of California, Riverside -- 12. Prayer: I will Love You in the Summer Time / Christian Wiman, Yale Divinity School -- 13. Revelation: From Dante to Mallarmé via Shakespeare's Hamlet: The Negativity of Poetic-Prophetic Revelation in Modernity / William Franke, Vanderbilt University -- 14. Silence: "Why Do You Hide Your Face?": God's Silence in William Paul Young's The Shack / Christopher Douglas, University of Victoria -- 15. Turning: Alabaster's Wager & the Experience of Conversion / James Kearney, University of California, Santa Barbara -- 16. Vision: 'Was it a vision or a waking dream'?: Rethinking Romantic Ideology / Gavin Hopps, University of St. Andrews -- Afterword: / Terry Eagleton, Lancaster University. "This book challenges the status quo of studies in literature and religion by returning to "experience" as a bridge between theory and practice. Essays focus on keywords of religious experience and demonstrate their applications in drama, fiction, and poetry. Each chapter explores the broad significance of its keyword as a category of psychological and social behavior and tracks its unique articulation by individual authors, including Conrad, Beecher Stowe and Melville. Together, the chapters construct a critical foundation for studying literature not only from the perspectives of theology and historicism but from the ways that literary experience reflects, reinforces, and sometimes challenges religious experience."--
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