Academic literature on the topic 'Christian fiction books'

Christian Richard “Dick” Schaare Jr. (pronounced Shar) was arguably New Jersey’s most prolific and perhaps greatest pulp artist of the 20th century. His iconic artwork would grace hundreds of book covers, dust jackets, comic books, magazines, cigar boxes, calendars, milk cartons, and advertisements for more than 40 years from the 1920s to the 1960s. His pulp fiction artwork is well-known except for 18 dust jackets commissioned by the A. L. Burt Company for their Boy Scout fiction series books published in the mid to late 1920s. That he illustrated these dust jackets, brimming with action, adventure, and drama, has been largely forgotten by time, but they highlight his iconic pulp fiction style early in his career.

AbstractThe DMP written by Lactantius and published after the 'Edict of Milan' (313), is an unclassifiable book. It was regarded as the first Christian historiography in latin but recent study has defended that the first was really the H.E. by Eusebius which was translated in latin at the end of the IVth century. We have analysed the romantic character of Lactantius' narration through emotional, existential features and its narrative movement. We have compared the prologues of the two books and managed to show that the DMP is surely a Christian history, authentic in many aspects, but discredited in favour of the « canonic » historiography by Eusebius which, even if it contains features of fiction too, is closer to the historic presuppositions of today's readers.

The Northern Irish author C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) was one of the outstanding Christian thinkers of the last century. A prolific author, he moved through different areas, such as literary criticism, youth literature, science fiction, and texts of theological exposition and of apologetics. In science fiction there is his remarkable “Cosmic Trilogy”: Beyond the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hid­eous Strength. In these three books, Lewis presents a vast array of themes. Among these is angelology,the systematic study of heavenly beings known as angels. The aim of this article is to present the major influences that Lewis used to build his angelology: old Jewish literature, exemplified in texts such as the Ethiopian Enoch (or the Book of Enoch or First Enoch), and the biblical tradition itself. The article will seek also to defend the hypothesis that, using fiction, Lewis builds an imaginative and suggestive theology that is a critique of the rationalism of continental theol­ogy of his day.

Besides being one of the major American authors of the postwar period, Bernard Malamud is also one of the leading representatives of contemporary Jewish fiction. When God's Grace was published, it received very mixed reviews and the novel is likely to remain one of Malamud’s most controversial books. Part of the audience’s puzzlement derives from the fact that with its grotesque characters and strange events God’s Grace seems to defy definition. The novel is filled with literary references and biblical symbolism that mainly draws on Genesis and on the apocalyptic tradition fused with elements of Messianism. The author discusses the genre problem of God’s Grace by outlining some of its background in contemporary America fiction and then analyzing the meaning and effect of Malamud’s use of Jewish/Christian symbolism to enhance the valuable aspects of the Jewish inheritance.

Abstract This paper presents the circumstances surrounding the publication of the Romanian translations of C. S. Lewis’s best known works. In the first part, the author gives information about the Romanian authors who were acquainted with Lewis’s writings during Communism, when the translation and printing of books on religious topics was under the tight control of a totalitarian government. In spite of that control, two Lewis titles-The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Mere Christianity-which were translated in the US, were smuggled into Romania. The second part of this paper deals with the remarkably changed situation after the emergence of a new regime in 1990. Since then Lewis’s books have been published, often in multiple print runs, by secular as well as Christian publishers, with a total of 12 fiction and 13 non-fiction titles, indicating a wide popular reception of his work.

The text reviews a few books, written by muslim migrants in Germany. The kurdish author Balci speaks about the violence in the submilieu of some muslim migrants with special respect to turkish and arab (and kurdish) differences and the violence against the christian migrants. As she had a job in social work with migrants, she relies on facts, but call her book a "novel". The two Iraqis present two ways to think about IS. The one, who never lived for a longer time in the Orient, tries to imagine, how the radicalisation can come into being in Germany among muslim migrants, that leads them to terrorism. The other is coming form this experience, but dont focus on the facts, that pushed him into migration. So the paper give an insight into the sub-milieu of islamists in Germany. Fiction and facts are not easy to differentiate, but each of these books shows aspects of the current debate among them.

SCIENCE FICTION by Sherryl Vint. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2021. 224 pages. Paperback; $15.95. ISBN: 9780262539999. *Science Fiction is the story of the romance between fiction and science. The goal of the book is not to define the history or essence of science fiction, but rather to explore what it "can do" (p. 3). How does fiction affect scientific progress? How does it influence which innovations we care about? In the opposite direction, what bearing does science have on the stories that are interesting to writers at a point in time? Science Fiction references hundreds of books to paint a cultural narrative surrounding science fiction. Throughout the book, Vint refers to the fiction as ‘sf' in order to avoid distinctions between science fiction and speculative fiction. The dynamic between science and fiction is a relationship defined by both scientific progress and by forming judgments of the direction of development through a lens of fiction. Fiction is cause and effect; we use fiction to reflect upon changes in the world, and we use fiction to explore making change. *Vint, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies and of English at the University of California, Riverside, gives overviews of different areas of sf. These include some of the most common sf elements, such as utopias and dystopias (chap. 2), as well as relatively recent concerns, such as climate change (chap. 7). Through these questions, she is navigating one question: how does sf engage with the world? It is more complex than the commonly reflected-upon narrative that sf is an inspiration to inventors--it is a relationship moving in both directions and involves value judgments as well as speculation about scientific possibilities. *The book also navigates the attitudes at the root of sf. Vint presents sf as a fundamentally hopeful, perhaps even an optimistic, genre. She describes sf as "equally about frightening nightmares and wondrous dreams" (p. 13). Yet even dystopian stories require hope for a future. Showing the world gone wrong still requires "the seeds of believing that with better choices we might avoid these nightmares" (p. 32). This is certainly true in the discussion of climate change sf. Where nonfiction writing often focuses on the impartial mitigation of disasters, the heart of fiction offers "the possibility to direct continuous change toward an open future that we (re)make" (p. 136). *The most surprising chapter is the penultimate one, focusing on economics (chap. 8). Vint discusses the recent idea of money as a "social technology" (p. 143) and the ways our current economy is increasingly tied to science, including through AI market trading and the rise of Bitcoin. The chapter also focuses on fiction looking at alternative economic systems--how will the presence or absence of scarcity, altered by technology, change the economic system? Answers to this and similar questions have major implications on the stories we tell and the way we seek to structure society. *As Christians, we have stories to help us deal with our experiences in life and our hope for the future. Science Fiction discusses sf as the way that our communities, including the scientific community, process life's challenges and form expectations for the future. We must not only repeat the stories from scripture, but also participate in the formation of the cultural narratives as ambassadors of Christ. While Science Fiction does not discuss the role of religion in storytelling, the discussion of our ambitions and expectations for the future is ripe for a Christian discussion. *Vint describes sf as a navigational tool for the rapid changes occurring in the world. Science Fiction references many titles that illustrate the different roles sf has played at historical points and that continue to form culture narratives. While some pages can feel like a dense list of titles, it is largely a book expressing excitement about the power and indispensability of sf. I would recommend this book for those who want to think about interactions between fiction, science, and culture, or learn about major themes of sf, as well as those interested in broadening the horizons of their sf reading. *Reviewed by Elizabeth Koning, graduate student in the Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801.

Abstract Veronica Roth’s Divergent is a young adult fiction and movie franchise that addresses issues of political power, social inequity, border control, politics of fear, gender, ethnicity, violence, surveillance, personal authenticity and mind control. It is possible a large part of the popularity of the series is its attention to these issues which young Western audiences are concerned about. The narrative makes heroes of protagonists who become activists for justice and struggle against oppressive social-political systems. What follows is a literary analysis of Divergent, evaluating its treatment of public theology and social justice themes, and discussing implications for Christian activism, especially for youth and young adults. It affirms the ethos in the books of resisting oppression, and questions assumptions about gender and abuse, violence and imperial control, personal authenticity and categorization, and difference and sameness.

This survey of clerical characters in Canadian English fiction from Ralph Connor (1901) to Marina Endicott (2008) indicates that our literary ministers, which have been very little studied, deviate significantly from British and American traditions. Writers such as Sinclair Ross (1941) , Margaret Laurence (1964) , Robertson Davies (1970 , 1981), and Warren Cariou (1999) present ministries that thrive when they are plural, communal, spontaneous, or feminine. Christian leadership in these books is surprising and eccentric, often shaped by pastors who do successful ministry in spite of themselves. Their lack of faith or confidence is often a key component of their ministries. Additionally, ministry arises from unexpected sources not sanctioned by ecclesiastical authority and is nevertheless effective and resilient.

Between 1979 and 1994, conservative, Protestant Christian fiction, or simply "evangelical fiction," has burgeoned into a powerful literary representative of America's modern evangelical subculture. This study examines that phenomenon by combining: (a) close textual analysis of the novels, particularly novels written by two important evangelical novelists--Janette Oke, romance writer, and Frank Peretti, author of supernatural thrillers; (b) analysis of the reading habits and tastes of 218 readers of evangelical fiction in the Muncie, Indiana, area by way of questionnaire responses and also follow-up interviews with 75 of those respondents; and (c) careful investigation of the cultural context in which these novels are written, published, and read.One particular issue investigated is whether readers read these novels primarily for entertainment or for spiritual edification. On one hand, these novels fit into the category of "popular" fiction and therefore meet readers' needs for entertainment, albeit entertainment that is consistent with evangelicals' theology, lifestyle, and world view. On the other hand, these novels fill readers' needs for edification, for overt religious support and teaching, for perpetuation of what evangelicals already believe. They are, in Roland Barthes' words, examples of doxa, i.e., history transformed into nature.Another special issue investigated is the role that these novels play in the battle against mainstream secular culture. In particular, Oke's novels function as cultural preservers, particularly of nineteenth-century models for the family, morality, and unworldliness; and Peretti's novels function as cultural combatants, actively naming and attacking secular enemies, especially the New Age movement and abortion industry.The study concludes that evangelical fiction not only reflects evangelical subculture, but also affects it; that the genre has undergone dramatic changes from 1979 to 1994 and that publishers, writers, and readers are calling for more sophisticated fiction. However, evangelical fiction, as a cultural expression, falls within what is sometimes called the "evangelical ghetto" and, since evangelicalism is a religious orthodoxy, the fiction will have difficulty emerging from that ghetto.
Department of English

Thesis (MA)-- Stellenbosch University, 2013.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Over the past three decades in South Africa, the documentation of slave history at the Cape Colony by historians has burgeoned. Congruently, interest in the history of slavery has increased in South African letters and culture. Here, literature is often employed in order to imaginatively represent the subjective view-point and experiences of slaves, as official records contained in historiography and the archive often exclude such interiority. This thesis is a study of the representations of slave subjectivity in two novels: Rayda Jacobs’s The Slave Book (1998) and Unconfessed (2007) by Yvette Christiansë. Its task is to investigate and traverse the multitude of readings made possible in these literary representations, and then to challenge such readings by juxtaposing the representational strategies of the two novels. Both primary texts are works of historical fiction that, in different ways, draw on the archive and historiography in order to grant historical plausibility to their narratives. Engaging with the distinct methods with which they approach and interpret such historical information, I adopt the terms “glimpsing” and “reading sideways”. Throughout this study, I engage each of these methods in order to demonstrate the value, and limits, of each technique in its engagement with the complexities of representing slave subjectivity in the wake of its (predominant) occlusion from historical and official data. Chapter One presents a brief overview of the emergence of the slave past in historiography and public spaces. Following Pumla Gqola’s statement that “slave memory [has] increase[d] in visibility in post-apartheid South Africa”, I move to a discussion of the theoretical perspectives on (re)memory as employed by writers of fiction that exemplify “a higher, more fraught level of activity to the past than simply identifying and recording it ” (“Slaves” 8) . In turn, I identify the imperative archival silence places on authors to write about slaves, and the relevance of genre in this undertaking. Specifically, I consider the romantic and tragic historical fiction genres as they are utilised by Jacobs and Christiansë in approaching representations of slave subjectivity, and how this influences emplotment. Chapter One concludes with a brief exposition of the literary representations offered by Unconfessed and The Slave Book. Chapter Two presents a detailed study of Rayda Jacobs’s The Slave Book as a novel of historical fiction. Jacobs takes up a methodology of “glimpsing” at the slave past through the representations available in historiography. I trace the moments at which the text seeks to convey slave subjectivity, within and without historical discourses, through such “glimpses”, and show how they are employed to establish a focus on interiority and to humanise slave characters. Chapter Three focuses on Yvette Christiansë’s Unconfessed and explores its explicit engagement with silences surrounding the protagonist Sila van den Kaap’s historical presence in the Cape Town Archives. I read Christiansë’s representation of these silences as “acts of looking sideways” at the discursive practices inherent in the historical documentation of slave voices that enact her resistance to “filling” these silences with detailed narrative. I argue that the various forms of silence in the narrative allow for a deeper understanding of the injustices and oppression suffered by Sila van den Kaap, and that it is these silences, ironically, which grant her voice. Chapter Four presents a comparison of the novels and their respective representational techniques of “glimpsing” versus “looking sideways”. While the distinct efficacy and implication of each approach is critically evaluated, both are ultimately found to make an invaluable addition to the literary exploration of slave subjectivity as attention is drawn to the interiority of each text’s characters.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Oor die afgelope drie dekades, het die dokumentasie wat opgelewer is deur historici in Suid- Afrika met betrekking tot die slawe in die Kaapkolonie floreer. Ooreenstemmend, het belangstelling in die geskiedenis van die slawe in die gebied van kultuur en letterkunde toegeneem. In hierdie konteks, word literatuur dikwels in diens geneem om op ‘n verbeeldingsryke manier die subjektiewe standpunt en die bestaan van die slawe te verteenwoording, wat vroeër in amptelike rekords dikwels sodanige innerlikheid uitsluit. Hierdie tesis is 'n studie van die voorstellings van slaaf subjektiwiteit in twee romans: Rayda Jacobs se The Slave Book (1998) en Unconfessed (2007) deur Yvette Christiansë. Dit beoog verder om ondersoek in te stel na die menigte lesings in literêre voorstellings en sodanige lesings uit te daag deur die vergelyking van die twee betrokke tekste. Ek neem die "skramse” en "sywaartse" sienings as metodiek vir die eien en interpretasie van argief-materiaal in die twee tekste. Deurgaans in hierdie studie gebruik ek hierdie metodieke op hulle beurt ten einde die waarde van elke tegniek te demonstreer, in terme van die voorstellingshandeling wat elk gebruik om slaaf subjektiwiteit te verteenwoordig. In Hoofstuk Een, word teoretiese perspektiewe oor ‘herinnering’ soos dit bestaan as gevolg van, en ten spyte van, die argief, beskryf en ontleed. In my oorsig van die rol en doel van die argief sowel as die onthou van 'n slaaf verlede in die hedendaagse Suid-Afrika, word benaderings wat in verskeie velde onderneem is om slawerny en sy slagoffers uit te beeld, ook in ag geneem. Ek identifiseer die noodsaaklikheid wat “stiltes” in die argief op skrywers plaas om oor slawe te skryf, asook die relevansie van die genre in hierdie onderneming. Ek kyk spesifiek na die romantiese en historiese fiksie genres soos hulle deur Jacobs en Christiansë gebruik word in hul voorstellings van slaaf subjektiwiteit, en hoe dit voorstellingshandeling beïnvloed. Hoofstuk Een word afgesluit met 'n kort uiteensetting van die literêre voorstellings, soos uitgebeeld in The Slave Book en Unconfessed. Hoofstuk Twee is 'n ondersoek na die funksie van Rayda Jacobs se The Slave Book as 'n historiese fiksie-roman. Jacobs se roman bepeins die geskiedenis van slawerny deur die voorstellingshandeling van ‘n "skramse kyk”. Ek ondersoek die waarde van die romanse wat in die roman opgeneem word, sowel as Jacobs se gebruik van historiografie om haar verhaal te ondersteun. Hoofstuk Drie fokus op Yvette Christiansë se Unconfessed en die wyse waarop die slaaf karakter as protagonis die stiltes as gemarginaliseerde aan die leser kommunikeer, en daaropvolgend, die wyse waarop die historiese figuur, ten spyte van die stiltes in die argief, kommunikeer. Hierdie metodiek bestempel ek as die "sywaartse kyk". Ek argumenteer dat die stiltes in die roman ‘n leemte laat vir 'n dieper begrip van die onreg en onderdrukking wat deur die protagonis gely word, en dat, ironies genoeg, dit hierdie stiltes is wat aan haar ‘n “stem” gee. Hoofstuk Vier is 'n vergelyking tussen die romans en hul doeltreffendheid. Altwee tekste, van ewe belang nagaande die bevordering van subjektiwiteit van slawe tydens die Kaapkolonie, beslaan elk 'n ander benadering tot die argief en geskiedenis self. Dit is met hierdie perspektiewe waarmee hierdie studie omgaan. Beide tekste vorm ‘n waardevolle toevoeging tot die literêre verkenning van slaaf subjektiwiteit deurdat aandag op die innerlikheid van elke teks se protagoniste gevestig word. Verder, deurdat die tekste met historiografie en die argief omgaan, spreek hulle diskursiewe kwessies rakende slaaf subjektiwiteit en die voorstellings daarvan aan.

This thesis develops a critical vocabulary for dealing with the visual appearance of prose fiction where it is manipulated for effect by authors. It explores why literary criticism and theory has dismissed such features as either unreadable experimental gimmicks or, more recently, as examples of the worst kind of postmodernist decadence. Through the examination of three problematical texts (B.S. Johnson's Albert Angelo, Christine Brooke-Rose's Thru and Alasdair Gray's Lanark: a Life in Four Books), the thesis demonstrates that an awareness of the graphic surface can make significant contributions to interpretation particularly around the issues of representation in fiction and our understanding of the reading process in general. There are four large chapters divided into sections. Chapter One sets out to demonstrate both how and why the graphic surface has been neglected; the first section looks at the visual perception of graphic surface and at how that perception may be obscured by other concerns or automatised until unnoticed. Section two looks at theoretical obstacles to the perception of the graphic surface, particularly those which see printed text as either an idealised sign-system or a representation of spoken language. Section three moves on to examine how 'blindness' to the graphic surface, and particularly to its potential mimetic usage, is reflected and perpetuated in literary criticism. Section four examines critical assumptions about the transformation of manuscript to novel, and what our familiarity with the printed form of the book leads us to take for granted. Section five discusses our choice of texts and their specific authorial and critical backgrounds. Chapters Two, Three and Four deal with the three chosen texts (listed above) individually and in detail, before a concluding summary which touches on some of the implications of the project.

Abstract Chapter 4 focuses on a forgotten writer of the conservative movement. D. Keith Mano was the author of nine novels published between 1968 and 1998, including his masterpiece, Take Five (1982), an ambitious postmodern fiction influenced by Thomas Pynchon and William Gaddis. Today, his books are ignored by critics and general readers. The reasons for this neglect are reflected in the two magazines for which he wrote. He was one of National Review’s most prolific contributors in the 1970s and 1980s, writing a column titled “The Gimlet Eye” in which he satirized liberals. He was also a contributing editor for Playboy; he considered himself a Christian pornographer who led readers to grace through explicit representations of sex. His work, in other words, was too conservative for the left-liberal critics who promoted postmodern literature in the 1970s and 1980s, too transgressive and formally experimental for Christian conservative readers. These two sides of his work reflect the central contradiction of post–World War II conservatism: its attempt to simultaneously promote Christian tradition and the capitalist free market. At the same time, Mano’s novels allegorize his sense of the increasing obsolescence of highbrow literature within the conservative movement.

The chapter discusses representations of Christian practices, religious experiences and biblical motifs in recent Scandinavian children’s and young adult literature. It is claimed that after an almost one hundred-year hiatus, during which overt Christian symbols, stories and experiences have been absent from mainstream children’s publishing, we are now witnessing a return of such religious expressions in fictional and aesthetic form. The books under scrutiny are from Denmark, Sweden and Norway, and include critically acclaimed picture books as well as young adult fiction and crossover literature. It is argued that it is once again possible to bring up Christian motifs and stories in our post-secular societies, not because of increased faith in the general population, but because religious issues to a greater degree have become part of contemporary non-confessional discourse.

Abstract This chapter turns attention to one of the most successful fantasy film series of recent years and examines them as adaptations of their Protestant literary source. C. S. Lewis invented the genre of Christian fantasy fiction, imbuing the stuff of fantasy with meanings rooted in Anglican theology and Christian eschatology. The film series trilogy, launched with The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), adapted Lewis’s beloved books to the fantasy movie genre. Although the films were produced by Walden Media and were promoted to Christians using niche marketing techniques, Brown finds that the film adaptation dilutes some of Lewis’s key spiritual insights. Brown is not making a simple objection of infidelity to the text but explaining how the filmmakers have transformed the Narnia stories into something more palliative to secular, therapeutic culture than Lewis intended.

This chapter examines how readers engaged with Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth and the debates surrounding it. The Late Great Planet Earth was explicitly marketed to two distinct audiences—evangelical and trade—in two distinct packages. Zondervan sold it alongside other books on Bible prophecy in Christian bookstores, while Bantam issued an edition with a New Age/science fiction cover to capture the attention of secular readers in trade bookstores. Drawing on reviews on Amazon and other accounts from readers, the chapter considers the notion that the politics of The Late Great Planet Earth can be deduced from the words on the page. It suggests that readers who encountered The Late Great Planet Earth through the lens of millennial anxieties about the nuclear arms race and environmental degradation also read for personal reasons.

Abstract While the battle over the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses was being fought in Germany, and as the publications of Gamache and De Claremont spread across the Caribbean, a new genre of grimoire was brewing in the Anglo-Saxon world. The merging of fact and fiction had always been an integral aspect of the grimoire tradition, and in the twentieth century this was given a new twist with the genre of literary fantasy not only being influenced by the magical tradition but also inspiring the creation of new grimoires. They also reached a new audience, attracting the attention of counter-culture movements in the post-war West. As a consequence they became the basis for new, non-Christian religions whose appeal stretched far beyond the rarefied, middle-class esotericism of the Golden Dawn and its offshoots.

Abstract This book is the first full-length study of the novels of Christine Brooke-Rose. It aims to provide a coherent overview of her fictional muvre and to map her place in the field of contemporary literature. Brooke-Rose has been widely recognized as one of Britain’s most innovative contemporary writers. The dismantling of systems, conventions, and readers’ expectations is at the heart of all her fiction; the goal of her novels is to teach people to see things anew, to look behind the discursive and social systems which naturalize convention, and to question this process of naturalization. It is not surprising, then, that she should be a difficult novelist to categorize. Indeed, despite the fact that she is a British writer, Brooke-Rose has been consistently identified with the nouveau roman and subsequent movements in the French novel since she began writing criticism of contemporary French fiction in the 1960s. I shall examine why this has been so, to what extent it is a relevant classification, and what an alternative approach might entail.

This book concludes with a discussion of two figures, one Christian and one Jewish, each a master storyteller of fictions of Diaspora. The first is “John Mandeville, knight,” who recalls his journey to everywhere in the mid-fourteenth-century French text Mandeville's Travels. In his account, Mandeville claims that Hebrew is no longer the language of the Old Testament but rather of the Jews' current-day conspiracies against Christians. The other voice is provided by Eleazer ben Asher ha-Levi, whose Book of Memory deals with inheritance in a diasporic inversion that encompasses the loss of Jerusalem. This conclusion also considers The Testament of Naphtali, a text that distills the themes of Diaspora in the Book of Memory and resists some of the redemptive possibilities for the ten Jewish tribes offered by rabbinic midrash.

Abstract Chapter 5 explores fiction written by movement conservatism’s two most influential figureheads: Russell Kirk and William F. Buckley, Jr. Kirk, the author of The Conservative Mind (1952), was the preeminent Burkean traditionalist of the post–World War II era. Historians often juxtapose him and Buckley, seeing Kirk as embodying a more humane version of conservatism, attuned to literature and the fine arts, and eschewing the free-market economics championed by National Review. Kirk and Buckley’s fiction, however, complicates this picture. Both wrote didactic popular literature for a conservative audience; Kirk wrote Christian horror stories, while Buckley is famous for his bestselling Blackford Oakes spy novels. These fictions are linked by their middlebrow aesthetic and by their attempts to imagine academic counter-circuits that might bypass the liberal-dominated university. This chapter focuses on a late-career novel by each writer: Kirk’s Lord of the Hollow Dark (1979) and Buckley’s Last Call for Blackford Oakes (2005). Kirk’s novel features a Satanic book club whose diabolical misinterpretations of T. S. Eliot mirror the reading practices of post-1960s literary criticism. Buckley’s novel presents the CIA as an alternative to the English Department: a place where advanced forms of literary expertise might thrive, pursued by tradition-minded defenders of the West.

Abstract As we have seen, at the outset of The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown states as a “fact” that “all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate” (p. 1). My concern in this book is not with the artwork, architecture, or secret rituals, but with the documents that Brown describes. The problem is that most of his readers will have no grounds on which to evaluate what he says, for example, about the other Gospels that are not found in the New Testament, or the formation of the canon of scripture, or the role of Constantine in shaping the Christian Bible. And so I have thought it important to set the record straight, insofar as possible, and to engage in critical history so as to separate the historical fact from the literary fiction. As it turns out, much of what Brown sets forth about the early Christian documents, largely on the lips of his Grail expert Leigh Teabing, is built into the fabric of his fictional narrative and cannot be trusted as part of the historical record.

Abstract This chapter considers the trope of the body in the library in the Golden Age crime fiction of the first half of the twentieth century—both the corpse on the hearthrug of the country house library that becomes a cliché of much early clue-puzzle crime fiction, and the reading, writing, lounging, snoozing, shelving, dusty bodies to be found in university libraries. It identifies a wide range of library-focussed crime fiction from both the USA and the UK, examining descriptions of libraries through a deployment of Bachelard’s poetics of space. Its central focus is Agatha Christie’s The Body in the Library (1942) and Dorothy L. Sayers’s Gaudy Night (1936). It suggests that for Christie the trope functions as a synecdoche for the distancing effects with which the Golden Age crime novel treats violence, while for Sayers the material paradoxes of bodies, books, and libraries undermine the novel’s ostensible valorization of the life of the mind.

The article deals with satirical tendencies in Swedish literature and cinema of the end of the 20th — beginning of the 21st century. On the example of the book by C.-J. Vallgren “This is for you for a brochure, Mr. Bachmann” and R. Östlund’s paintings “Turist” (“Force Majeure”), “Voluntarily-compulsory”, “The Square” and “Triangle of Sadness”, the main problems of Swedish society are analyzed, which are becoming pan-European scale. The paper concludes that both authors consider the most significant problems to be the disappearance of independent thinking, the distortion of ethical principles, the fear of losing personal well-being against the backdrop of growing ethnic and class contradictions in Europe, indicating the beginning of a new socio-political stage in society. Comprehending European double standards, hypocrisy, ostentatious political correctness, the authors testify that European society is turning into a refined capitalist minority that has lost its main value orientation — Christian humanism. The poetics of the literary and cinematographic works of Vallgren and Östlund differ significantly from the methods of their predecessors: modern authors abandon the satirical principles of secondary convention, allowing themselves only slight exaggeration. This testifies to the desire for journalism, documentary depiction, the movement from fiction to non-fiction, to the understanding of the historical context and socio-political perspective.