The Divine Face in Four Writers: Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Hesse, and C. S. Lewis

by Maurice Hunt

Overview

An important contribution to studies in literature and religion, The Divine Face in Four Writers traces the influence of Christian and Classical prototypes in ideas and depictions of the divine face, and the centrality of facial expressions in characterization, in the works of William Shakespeare, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Hermann Hesse, and C.S. Lewis.

Maurice Hunt explores both the human yearning to see the divine face from post-Apostolic time to the 20th century, as reflected in religion, myth, and literature by writers such as Augustine, Shakespeare, Hardy and Dostoyevsky, as well as the significance of the hidden divine face in writings by Spenser, Milton, Hesse, and Lewis. A final coda briefly detailing Emmanuel Levinas's system of ethics, based on the human face and its encounters with other faces, allows Hunt to focus on specific moments in the writings of the four major writers discussed that have particular ethical value.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501311024
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	12/17/2015
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Maurice Hunt is Research Professor of English at Baylor University, USA. He is the author of ten books, including Shakespeare's Romance of the Word (1990), Shakespeare's Labored Art: Stir, Work, and the Late Plays (1995), Shakespeare's Religious Allusiveness (2004), and Shakespeare's Speculative Art (2011).

Table of Contents

Preface

I. The Judeo-Christian Heritage
Chapter One: The Divine Face and the Face to Face in The Bible
Inter-Chapter: St. Augustine's Incarnate Face of Christ
Chapter Two: Christ-Like and Compassionate Faces in Shakespeare's Richard II, King Lear, The Tempest, and Julius Caesar
Inter-Chapter: The Modern Face in Thomas Hardy's The Returban of the Native
Chapter Three: Christ's Face and its Adversaries in Dostoyevsky's The Idiot

II. The Pagan Heritage
Chapter Four: Divine Faces and the Face to Face in Apuleius's
Metamorphoses: The Tale of Psyche and Cupid
Chapter Five: Syncretic Faces in Hermann Hesse's Demian
Chapter Six: Pagan and Christian Faces in C. S. Lewis's Till We
Have Faces

Coda: Emmanuel Levinas's Ethics of the Face
Works Cited

Editorial Reviews

Maurice Hunt demonstrates that a great many diverse works of religious and secular works have represented face-to-face encounters between human beings and gods or between human beings and their fellow human beings in order to convey religious or ethical ideas. I came away from this book with a new recognition of an important motif in Western religious and cultural history. I also came away with a deeper understanding of the psychology of religious belief. It is an impressive achievement.

James Hirsh

Maurice Hunt demonstrates that a great many diverse works of a religious and secular nature have represented face-to-face encounters between human beings and gods or between human beings and their fellow human beings in order to convey religious or ethical ideas. I came away from this book with a new recognition of an important motif in Western religious and cultural history. I also came away with a deeper understanding of the psychology of religious belief. It is an impressive achievement.” —James Hirsh, Professor of English, Georgia State University, USA

From the Publisher