Mapping the Sacred: Religion, Geography and Postcolonial Literatures

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Jamie S. Scott, Paul Simpson-Housley
Rodopi, 2001 - 486 Seiten
Interweaving the interpretative methods of religious studies, literary criticism and cultural geography, the essays in this volume focus on issues associated with the representation of place and space in the writing and reading of the postcolonial. The collection charts the ways in which contemporary writers extend and deepen our awareness of the ambiguities of economic, social and political relations implicated in "sacred space" - the sense of spiritual significance associated with those concrete locations in which adherents of different religious traditions, past and present, maintain a ritual sense of the sanctity of life and its cycles. Part I, "Land, Religion and Literature after Britain," explores how postcolonial writers dramatize the contested processes of colonization, resistance and decolonization by which lands and landscapes may be viewed as now sacred, now desacralized, now resacralized. Part II, "Sacred Landscapes and Postcoloniality across International Literatures," draws upon postcolonial theory to inquire into how contemporary fiction, drama and poetry represent themes of divine dispensation, dispossession and reclamation in regions as diverse as Haiti, Israel, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Arctic, and the North American frontier. A critical "Afterword" considers the implications of such multi-disciplinary approaches to postcolonial literatures for present and future research in the field. Writers discussed in the essays include Russell Banks; James K. Baxter; Ursula Bethell; Erna Brodber; Marcus Clarke; Allen Curnow; Edwidge Danticat; Mak Dizdar; Sara Jeannette Duncan; Zee Edgell; "Grey Owl"; Haruki Murakami; Seamus Heaney; Peter H eg; Hugh Hood; Janette Turner Hospital; James Houston; Dany Laferri re; B. Kojo Laing; Lee Kok Liang; K.S. Maniam; Mudrooroo; R.K. Narayan; Ngugi wa Thiong'o; Ben Okri; Chava Pinchas-Cohen; Mary Prince; Nancy Prince; Nayantara Sahgal; Ken Saro-Wiwa; Ibrahim Tahir; Amos Tutuola; W.D. Valgardson; Derek Walcott; and Rudy Wiebe. Maps accompany almost every essay.

Im Buch

Inhalt

Religion Landscape and the Postcolonial Moment
5
The Hindu Mothers Space in Nayantara Sahgals Mistaken Identity
16
CANADA
18
Strategies for Political and Religious Colonization
39
as Theological Space in Hugh Hoods Novels
53
Rudy Wiebes A Discovery of Strangers
71
Conversion Convictism and Captivity in Australian Fiction
93
A Third Space? Postcolonial Australia and the Fractal Landscape
111
Levels of National Engagement in Ibrahim Tahirs The Last Imam
265
Landscapes Forests and Borders within the West African Global Village
275
CLARA JOSEPH
297
Revisiting R K Narayans Malgudi and Little India
317
SACRED LANDSCAPES AND POSTCOLONIALITY
335
Language Gender
355
The Sacred Landscapes of Bosnian History
381
Postcolonial Environment as Spatial Extinction
401

Religious Presence and the Landscape
131
Varieties of Spiritual Landscape in Caribbean Literature
179
Theology of Landscape 12 and Ngugi wa Thiongos The River Between
227
Ken SaroWiwa and the Literature of the Ogoni Struggle
241
Postcolonial Theory and Native American Lessons of Place
419
Keeping Our Feet On the Ground and Our Heads
445
CONTRIBUTORS
463
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Seite 95 - FROM Greenland's icy mountains, From India's coral strand; Where Afric's sunny fountains Roll down their golden sand; From many an ancient river, From many a palmy plain, They call us to deliver Their land from error's chain.
Seite 220 - And I will turn my hand upon thee, and purely purge away thy dross, and take away all thy tin...
Seite 220 - Therefore saith the LORD, the LORD of Hosts, the Mighty One of Israel, Ah, I will ease Me of Mine adversaries, and avenge Me of Mine enemies...
Seite 375 - And it shall be in that day, that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem; half of them toward the former sea, and half of them toward the hinder sea: in summer and in winter shall it be.
Seite 375 - In that day there shall be a fountain opened To the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem For sin and for uncleanness.
Seite 86 - And as they were eating, he took bread, and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them, and said, "Take; this is my body." And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, and they all drank of it. And he said to them, "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.
Seite 133 - When I am very earnestly digging I lift my head sometimes, and look at the mountains, And muse upon them, muscles relaxing. I think how freely the wild grasses flower there, How grandly the storm-shaped trees are massed in their gorges And the rain-worn rocks strewn in magnificent heaps. Pioneer plants on those uplands find their own footing; No vigorous growth, there, is an evil weed: All weathers are salutary. It is only a little while since this hillside Lay untrammelled likewise, Unceasingly...
Seite 229 - When you stood in the valley, the two ridges ceased to be sleeping lions united by their common source of life. They became antagonists. You could tell this, not by anything tangible but by the way they faced each other, like two rivals ready to come to blows in a life and death struggle for the leadership of this isolated region.
Seite 428 - The trader called his attention to the stone, saying that it must belong to his pavilion. John Duck did not seem pleased at this. He bent down and spoke to the boulder in a low voice, inquiring whether it had ever been in his pavilion. According to John the stone replied in the negative. It is obvious that John Duck spontaneously structured the situation in terms that are intelligible within the context of Ojibwa language and culture.

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