Summary
How do we stand in relation to everything that comes down to us from the past? Is the very idea of tradition still useful in the wake of historical ruptures, such as the Holocaust, changes in the canon, and the end of colonialism? Drawing on a wide range of philosophers and literary theorists, these thirteen essays examine the response and resistance to religious, cultural, and literary tradition by various American, English, German, and African writers. Contributors analyze suspicion of tradition in modernity and present more complex and nuanced accounts of tradition that demonstrate its legitimacy and necessity in the lives of individuals and communities. Tradition emerges from their accounts both as a critique of destructive aspects of modernity and as consistent with some of its central values. Visit our website for sample chapters!
Table of Contents
| Introduction |
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1 | (212) |
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1 Tradition and the Terror of History: Christianity, the Holocaust, and the Jewish Theological Dilemma |
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19 | (20) |
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2 Charity Militant: Gadamer, Davidson, and Postcritical Hermeneutics |
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39 | (16) |
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3 "In the Chorus of Others": M.M. Bakhtin's Sense of Tradition |
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55 | (24) |
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4 The Role of the Kuhnian Paradigm in Tradition and Originality |
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79 | (20) |
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5 Walking vs. Flying: Kierkegaard on Tradition and the Moral Import of Literature |
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99 | (28) |
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6 My Own Private New England: Tradition, the Self, and the State in Cotton Mather's The Wonders of the Invisible World |
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127 | (16) |
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7 Holy Fire: Biblical Radicalism in the Narratives of Jarena Lee and Zilpha Elaw |
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143 | (22) |
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8 ESTESE and Doblado: Coleridge, Blanco White, and the Church of Rome |
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165 | (20) |
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9 Jane Eyre and the Tradition of Self-Assertion; or, Bronte's Socialization of Schiller's "Play Aesthetic" |
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185 | (28) |
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| 10 Tradition and Liberation: A Critique of German Cultural Modernity in Heinrich Boll and Hans-Georg Gadamer |
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213 | (24) |
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| 11 Community, Text, and Tradition in The French Lieutenant's Woman |
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237 | (18) |
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| 12 Storytellers and Interpreters in Achebe |
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255 | (14) |
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| About the Contributors |
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269 | |
Excerpts
"How do we stand in relation to everything that comes down to us from the past? Is the very idea of tradition still useful in the wake of historical ruptures such as the Holocaust, changes in the canon, and the end of colonialism? Suspicion of tradition as culturally narrow and oppressive is a persistent theme of modernity and has increased with the resurgence of religious traditionalism around the globe. At the same time, various groups demanding recognition for their distinctive cultural identity have reclaimed their traditions." "The essays in this volume offer analyses of religious, literary, and cultural traditions and both responses and resistance to them including works by Hans-Georg Gadamer, Josiah Rayes, Alasdair MacIntyre, Jacques Derrida, Charlotte Bronte, Soren Kierkegaard, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Edith Wharton, Chinua Achebe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Kuhn, Donald Davidson, antebellum, African-American women preachers, and Christian and Jewish thinkers in the wake of the Holocaust, among others."--BOOK JACKET.
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