This book combines literary criticism, postmodern theology, philosophy, and musicology in a rethinking of the relationship of modernist literature and religion. Erickson argues that theological modes of thinking are ingrained in the very roots of our metaphysical assumptions, and are impossible to escape, even and especially in the skeptical and experimental woks of modernism. By concentrating on moments of difficulty and ambiguity in works such as Henry James's The Golden Bowl, Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, and Arnold Schoenberg's opera Moses und Aron, the book identifies the...

The coexistence of American religion with popular culture has created a fertile yet caustic environment for new religious belief structures, new texts, and new worldviews that are uniquely American. This work considers ways in which American television, advertising, music, and video games have played a significant role in creating, representing, and influencing contradictory religious identities.

Uses recent thought in continental philosophy and postmodern theology to interpret hidden and contradictory 'god-ideas' in texts of modernism such as Henry James's The Golden Bowl, Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man, and Arnold Schoenberg's opera Moses und Aron .

Heresy studies is a new interdisciplinary, supra-religious, and humanist field of study that focuses on borderlands of dogma, probes the intersections between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, and explores the realms of dissent in religion, art, and literature. Free from confessional agendas and tolerant of both religious and non-religious perspectives, heresy studies fulfill an important gap in scholarly inquiry and artistic production.

Divided into four parts, the volume explores intersections between heresy and modern literature, it discusses intricacies of medieval heresies, it...