Postsecularism and literature: Prophetic and apocalyptic readings in Don Delillo, E. L. Doctorow and Toni Morrison

Kathryn Ludwig, Purdue University

Abstract

John McClure points to a strain of literature in which the religious and the secular mutually engage each other—the postsecular. His work suggests that the religious and the secular do not need to be in a hostile relationship to one another. This idea is available in Don DeLillo’s Underworld, E.L. Doctorow’s City of God, and Toni Morrison’s Paradise. Don DeLillo’s novel suggests that the secular can include the religious. E. L. Doctorow’s novel suggests that reading the religious involves failure. Toni Morrison’s novel suggests that we are at a place of taking stock about these issues. Reading these books through Buber’s notion of the prophetic, and also Girard’s understanding of the sacred, we understand that the postsecular moment involves a choice between the prophetic and the sacrificial. As Martel shows us in Life of Pi, science may be witnessing a similar shift in orientation to the religious. If there is any hope to be had (and Martin Matuštík suggests that we are in a moment in which there is a “scarcity of hope”) it is to be found in literary reading.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Goodhart, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Modern literature|American literature|Comparative

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