Trajectories of Mysticism in Theory and Literature is a collection of essays which considers how recent critical theory contributes to debates about mystical and negative theology. This collection draws upon a wide range of material, including Biblical texts, autobiographical, confessional and fictional writing from the sixteenth century to the twentieth century, divinity in English, German, Spanish and French traditions, as well as work on God and metaphysics by Schelling, Weil, Levinas, Derrida, de Ma, Irigaray, and Cixous.

This interdisciplinary and international collection explores the role of the arts in shaping contemporary religion and politics. The authors ask about the future of viable communities and democratic cultures in a postmodern world, looking for clues in artistic practices and institutions and their impact on how people create history and interpret texts. The collection shows that the arts are central to struggles over the shape of society in the new millennium.

With the diminished influence of intellectuals outside the academy and a marked decline in the quality of public discourse, many observers have called for the return of the "public intellectual." At the same time, religion is playing an increasingly public role in the modern world. This collection of essays examines the possibility that both religion and literature, in their complex interactions, are capable of reentering and renewing what the eminent German philosopher JUrgen Habermas refers to as "the public sphere."

Evil Children in Religion, Literature and Art explores the genesis, development, and religious significance of a literary and iconographic motif, involving a gang of urchins, usually male, who mock or assault a holy or eccentric person, typically an adult. Originating in the biblical tale of Elisha's mockery (2 Kings 2.23-24), this motif recurs in literature, hagiography, and art, from antiquity up to our own time, strikingly defying the conventional Judeo-Christian and Romantic image of the child as a symbol of innocence.

This volume disputes the assumption that Rossetti was a follower of Keble and Pusey, and shows how her dissatisfaction with the male-dominated call to celibacy led her to reject their notions of worldliness, and to form a closer bond with the physical world and the body.

Harold Fisch explores the biblical influence on the style and structure of landmark works by Fielding, Defoe, George Eliot, Kafka, Dostoevsky and others. Whilst the great novelists could not manage without the Bible, at the same time 'it would not do'. The book concludes with two chapters on the Israeli novelists S.Y. Agnon and A.B. Yehoshua.

This interdisciplinary and international collection explores the role of the arts in shaping contemporary religion and politics. The collection shows that the arts are central to struggles over the shape of society in the new millennium.

Evil Children in Religion, Literature and Art explores the genesis, development, and religious significance of a literary and iconographic motif, involving a gang of urchins, usually male, who mock or assault a holy or eccentric person, typically an adult. Originating in the biblical tale of Elisha's mockery (2 Kings 2.23-24), this motif recurs in literature, hagiography, and art, from antiquity up to our own time, strikingly defying the conventional Judeo-Christian and Romantic image of the child as a symbol of innocence.