On Religion and Memory

by Babette Hellemans (Editor), Willemien Otten (Editor), Burcht Pranger (Editor)

Overview

This volume takes up the challenge implied in Augustine's paradox of time: How does one account for the continuity of history and the certitude of memory, if time, in the guise of an indivisible "now," cuts off any extension of the present? The thinkers and artists the essays address include Augustine, Abelard, Eriugena and Thoreau, Calvin, Shakespeare, De Rancé, Stravinsky and Messiaen, Rubens and Woolf.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823251636
Publisher:	Fordham University Press
Publication date:	04/08/2013
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Babette Hellemans is Assistant Professor of Medieval History at the University of Groningen.

Willemien Otten is Professor of Theology and the History of Christianity at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Burcht Pranger is professor emeritus in the History of Christianity at the University of Amsterdam.

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations vii

Preface ix

Introduction: On Religion and Pastness Burcht Pranger 1

Part I Time and Eternity: Between and Betwixt

1 The Vision at Ostia: Augustine's Desire to Become a Red Indian Burcht Pranger 17

2 Memory and the Sublime: Wittgenstein on Augustine's Trouble with Time James Wetzel 32

Part II Moving Progressively Backward

3 The Man without Memory: Peter Abelard and Trust in History Babette Hellemans 45

4 Creation and Epiphanic Incarnation: Reflections on the Future of Natural Theology from an Eriugenian-Emersonian Perspective Willemien Otten 64

5 The Care of the Past: The Place of Pastness in Transgenerational Projects Charles Hallisey 89

6 Trembling in Time: Silence and Meaning between Barthes, Chateaubriand, and Rancé Mette Birkedal Bruun 100

Part III Time and the Ordinary

7 The Literary Comfort of Eternity: Calvin and Thoreau Ernst Van Den Hemel 123

8 The Past and History in Ordinary Language Philosophy Asja Szafraniec 137

Part IV Time and Lateness

9 From Past to Present and from Listening to Hearing: Final Indefinable Moments in Bach's and Stravinsky's Music Rokus De Groot 155

10 Late Style Messiaen Sander Van Maas 175

Part V Time and Oblivion

11 Of Shakespeare and Pastness Brian Cummings 189

12 The Anger of Angels: From Rubens to Virginia Woolf Peter Cramer 204

Notes 231

List of Contributors 269

Editorial Reviews

At once precise and polyphonic, On Religion and Memory takes both terms in a wonderfully wide range of senses. Language, music, and art; meditation and monasticism; memory and oblivion; time's contraction and its extension are interconnected and played off one another. This provocative anthology deserves to be read widely in philosophy, theology, religious studies, literary studies—indeed, across the humanities—to create and continue conversations about the curious structures and experiences of memory.-Karem MacKendrick, Le Moyne College

This creatively eclectic volume launches a bold experiment in exploring what it might mean to take Augustine's aporetic and non-linear understanding of time and eternity seriously. The questions posed are simultaneously historiographical and literary, on the one hand, and philosophical and theological, on the other. In exploring the relation between religion and pastness, the authors shuttle backward and forward in time, traverse theological and religious differences, and consider works of music and painting alongside those of literature and philosophy. At their best, the essays are fresh, insightful, moving—and challenging.-Virginia Burrus, Drew University

From the Publisher

“At once precise and polyphonic, On Religion and Memory takes both terms in a wonderfully wide range of senses. Language, music, and art; meditation and monasticism; memory and oblivion; time’s contraction and its extension are interconnected and played off one another. This provocative anthology deserves to be read widely in philosophy, theology, religious studies, literary studies—indeed, across the humanities—to create and continue conversations about the curious structures and experiences of memory.

Le Moyne College - Karmen MacKendrick

This creatively eclectic volume launches a bold experiment in exploring what it might mean to take Augustine’s aporetic and non-linear understanding of time and eternity seriously. The questions posed are simultaneously historiographical and literary, on the one hand, and philosophical and theological, on the other. In exploring the relation between religion and pastness, the authors shuttle backward and forward in time, traverse theological and religious differences, and consider works of music and painting alongside those of literature and philosophy. At their best, the essays are fresh, insightful, moving—and challenging.

Drew University - Virginia Burrus