The Sacred Desert: Religion, Literature, Art, and Culture / Edition 1

by David Jasper

Overview

The Sacred Desert is a reflection on the role of the desert in theology, history, literature, art and film.

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• An original reflection on the role of the desert in theology, history, literature, art and film.
  
• Discusses figures as diverse as Jesus, the early Christian Desert Fathers, T.E. Lawrence, T.S. Eliot, Georgia O’Keeffe, Wim Wenders and Jim Crace.
  
• Makes connections across millennia of desert literature.
  
• Deepens the reader’s understanding of the desert as a real place, as an interior space, and as a textual site,
  
• Concludes with comments on the recent conflicts in Iraq.
  
• Written in a readable and engaging style.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781405119740
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	06/18/2004
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

David Jasper is Professor of Literature and Theology at the University of Glasgow, and was the founding editor of the journal, Literature and Theology. He is the author of The Sacred and Secular Canon in Romanticism (1999) and co-editor of The Bible and Literature: A Reader (edited with Stephen Prickett, Blackwell Publishing, 1999) and Religion and Literature: A Reader (edited with Robert Detweiler, 2000).

Table of Contents

Foreword by David E. Klemm.

Preface.

List of illustrations.

1. Introduction: Meeting Points.

2. The Bible, Schoenberg, and Heidegger.

3. The Desert Fathers: Wandering and Miracles.

4. Time and Memory, Wind and Space: The Desert and Mysticism.

5. Mysticism and Modernity: Thomas Merton meets Don Cupitt.

6. The Literature of the Desert: Travellers and Poets.

7. The Literature of the Desert: Novelists.

8. Artists: Georgia O'Keefe, Bill Viola and Abstract Expressionism.

9. Films of the Desert: Pier Paolo Pasolini, Wim Wenders, Claire Dennis.

10. Desert Theology and Total Presence: Poets William Blake, T.S. Eliot and Yves Bonnefoy meet Hegel and Altizer.

11. Conclusion: Meeting Point.

Postscript: The Desert and the Recent Wars in Iraq.

Bibliography.

Index

Editorial Reviews

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

From the Publisher