ThePaganWritesBack

In her groundbreaking book, Zhang Ni presents a new reading strategy which integrates the study of world religion and world literature. This strategy, which she calls "pagan criticism," is applied to literary texts that explore the global resurgence of religion, as well as to the concepts of religion and the secular.

Using the works of four writers, two North American (Cynthia Ozick and Margaret Atwood) and two East Asian (Endō Shūsaku and Gao Xingjian), Ni explores the "pagan (re)turn" in the study of religion and literature. Through their fiction, drama, and prose, she highlights the historical complexities and contingencies present in literary texts, and argues against both Christian and secularist assumptions regarding aesthetics and hermeneutics.

Ni further suggests that the clash between religion and literature is not between monotheistic orthodoxies and the sanctification of literature, but rather between the modern Western model of religion and the secular and its non-Western others. She posits that when East and West converge under the rubric of paganism, the study of religion and literature evolves into the study of world religion and world literature.

作者简介

ZhangeNiisAssistantProfessorofReligionandCultureatVirginiaTech.