The Christian imagination: Essays on literature and the arts - Softcover

Leland Ryken

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0801077028 ISBN 13: 9780801077029

Publisher: Baker Book House, 1981

Synopsis

The Christian Imagination is an exceptional exploration of Christian belief, imagination, reading, and writing. Leland Ryken has collected essays and excerpts, long and short--nearly 500 pages' worth--all devoted (some more directly than others) to "thinking Christianly about literature." Contributors including J.R.R. Tolkien, Madeleine L'Engle, Flannery O'Connor, and T.S. Eliot discuss such topics as a Christian philosophy of literature, success and failure in current Christian fiction and poetry, realism, fantasy, and narrative. Perhaps the most common thread among these pieces is the understanding that Christian art "is by no means," as Ryken puts it, "always religious art." If you want to make a Christian work, advises Jacques Maritain, "then be Christian, and simply try to make a beautiful work." Also of particular interest is Clyde S. Kilby's "The Aesthetic Poverty of Evangelicalism." Despite the fact that the Bible is "a piece of art ... an imaginative book," says Kilby, the people who spend the most time with it "are in large numbers the foes of art and the sworn foes of imagination." --Jane Steinberg

Edition details

• Publisher: Baker Book House
• Publication date: 1981
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0801077028
• ISBN 13: 9780801077029
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448