A Biblical Text and its Afterlives: The Survival of Jonah in Western Culture - Softcover

Sherwood, Yvonne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521795613 ISBN 13: 9780521795616

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2001

Synopsis

This book charts the mutations of the book of Jonah as it latches onto Christian and Jewish motifs and anxieties, passes through highbrow and lowbrow culture, and finally becomes something of a scavenger among the ruins, as, in its most resourceful move to date, it begins to live off the demise of faith. This book is concerned with those versions of the biblical that escape proper disciplinary boundaries: it shifts the focus from "Mainstream" to "Backwater" interpretation. It is less a navigation of interpretative history and more an interrogation of larger political/cultural issues: anti-Judaism in Biblical Studies, the secularization of the Bible, and the projection of the Bible as credulous ingenu, naive Other to our savvy post-Enlightenment selves.

About this title

Book Description

This book is concerned with how interpretation re-shapes texts and will appeal to readers in Cultural Studies, Jewish Studies and Biblical Studies. It pursues the book of Jonah through sources as diverse as Moby Dick, medieval poetry, Jewish midrash, and sixteenth century Netherlandish art, and looks at how popular understandings of the book are on a collision course with academic/Christian understanding of the text. The theme is the resourcefulness of the Bible: it is not a static, homogenous object, but survives by re-forming itself, changing, and being stretched.

Review

"Rich with literary allusion, evocative images, and playful elegant turns of phrase, the work combines to great effect Sherwood's two areas of specialization: English literature and biblical studies...a more comprehensive book on the topic is hard to imagine..." Religious Studies Review

"A Biblical Text and Its Afterlives is surely one of the most erudite, compelling, and well-written books of the most recent generation of biblical scholarship. Sherwood combines a solid grounding in biblical studies and the history of interpretation, a sophisticated knowledge of the literature of cultural studies and literary theory, and an underlying commitment to the ethical and moral demands of reading. And mediating it all is the author's distinctive prose style. By turns elegant and witty, urbane and laugh-out-loud funny, Sherwood seems incapable of writing a bland sentence." Journal of Biblical Literature

"Rich with literary allusion, evocative images, and playful and elegant turns of phrase, the work combines to great effect Sherwood's two areas of specialization: English literature and biblical studies." Religious Studies Review

"...remarkable book...Sherwood writes in an engagingly droll style that makes the book a constant delight to read, and it should be accessible to anyone at college level or beyond...Sherwood does not disappoint." The Princeton Seminary Bulletin

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0521795613
• ISBN 13: 9780521795616
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 356