David Jasper

Broschiertes Buch

The Sacred Desert

Religion, Literature, Art and Culture

Beschreibung

The Sacred Desert is a fascinating and original work, which reflects on the role of the desert in theology, history, literature, art and film. Engaging with figures as diverse as Jesus, the early Christian Desert Fathers, William Blake, T.E. Lawrence, T.S. Eliot, Georgia O'Keeffe, Wim Wenders, Bill Viola, and Jim Crace, author David Jasper explores deserts as real places, as interior spaces and as they feature in numerous texts. He makes connections across millennia of desert texts, meditating on the mystical, religious and theological meanings that emerge. Underlying these interdisciplinary wanderings in the wasteland is the author's quest for a new form of religious thought and language. Lively and lucid, this outstanding work stretches from the Bible - perhaps still the greatest of our desert texts - through to contemporary experiences of the desert. It is truly an original work of theology, and a captivating journey through the history of religion.

Autor

David Jasper is Emeritus Professor at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and was for many years Changjiang Chair Professor at Renmin University of China, Beijing. Ou Guang-an is Professor of English Literature and Comparative Literature at the College of Foreign Languages, Shihezi University, China.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Wiley
• Seitenzahl: 208
• Erscheinungstermin: 18. Juni 2004
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 229mm x 152mm x 13mm
• Gewicht: 343g
• ISBN-13: 9781405119757
• ISBN-10: 1405119756
• Artikelnr.: 21627086

Rezensionen

"One of the really significant things about this work is howwidely Jasper ranges in his exploration of the spiritual meaning ofthe desert. He considers classic religious sources that havefocused their attention on the desert ideal... But he also exploresthe works of a range of artists, poets, writers, and filmmakers...The result is a playful, interdisciplinary rumination upon themyriad ways the desert has shaped and continues to shape --often by undermining expectations of meaning -- the religionsimagination. Recommended. Upper-level undergraduates and above;general readers."
Choice

"The Sacred Desert is a marvellous and truly integralconjunction of seemingly every dimension of that ultimate desertwhich is at once our

deepest beginning and our deepest ending.Theological and poetic at once, and critical and historicalsimultaneously, it offers us a vicarious voyage into our mostultimate ground, a ground beyond God but nontheless embodying thetotality of the Godhead. If that Godhead is an absolutenothingness, it is a truly actual nothingness, and most actual forus in that desert which is here so powerfully and socomprehensively evoked." Thomas Altizer, Professor Emeritus ofReligious Studies at the State University of New York and StonyBrook

"The Sacred Desert provides a journey into the innermostcore of the self--where the soul stands alone before an unknownGod, who is both darkness and light. David Jasper has written amagnificent theological reflection on the depth of spiritualmeaning sought and found by desert pilgrims in literature, art,film, history, and sacred scripture. A tour de force!"
David Klemm, University of Iowa