The Place of Imagination (Hardcover)

Joseph R. Wiebe

ISBN 10: 1481303864 / ISBN 13: 9781481303866

Published by Baylor University Press, Waco, 2017

About this Item

Hardcover. Wendell Berry teaches us to love our places - to pay careful attention to where we are, to look beyond and within, and to live in ways that are not captive to the mastery of cultural, social, or economic assumptions about our life in these places. Creation has its own integrity and demands that we confront it. In The Place of Imagination, Joseph R. Wiebe argues that this confrontation is precisely what shapes our moral capacity to respond to people and to places. Wiebe contends that Berry manifests this moral imagination most acutely in his fiction. Berry's fiction, however, does not portray an average community or even an ideal one. Instead, he depicts broken communities in broken places - sites and relations scarred by the routines of racial wounds and ecological harm. Yet, in the tracing of Berry's characters with place-based identities, Wiebe demonstrates the way in which Berry's fiction comes to embody Berry's own moral imagination. By joining these ambassadors of Berry's moral imagination in their fictive journeys, readers, too, can allow imagination to transform their affection, thereby restoring place as a facilitator of identity as well as hope for healed and whole communities. Loving place translates into loving people, which in turn transforms broken human narratives into restored lives rooted and ordered by their places. Creation has its own integrity and demands that we confront it. In The Place of Imagination, Joseph Wiebe argues that this confrontation is precisely what shapes our moral capacity to respond to people and to places. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9781481303866

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Place of Imagination (Hardcover)
• Publisher: Baylor University Press, Waco
• Publication Date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1481303864
• ISBN 13: 9781481303866
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

Wendell Berry teaches us to love our places--to pay careful attention to where we are, to look beyond and within, and to live in ways that are not captive to the mastery of cultural, social, or economic assumptions about our life in these places. Creation has its own integrity and demands that we confront it. In The Place of Imagination, Joseph R. Wiebe argues that this confrontation is precisely what shapes our moral capacity to respond to people and to places. Wiebe contends that Berry manifests this moral imagination most acutely in his fiction. Berry’s fiction, however, does not portray an average community or even an ideal one. Instead, he depicts broken communities in broken places--sites and relations scarred by the routines of racial wounds and ecological harm. Yet, in the tracing of Berry’s characters with place-based identities, Wiebe demonstrates the way in which Berry’s fiction comes to embody Berry’s own moral imagination. By joining these ambassadors of Berry’s moral imagination in their fictive journeys, readers, too, can allow imagination to transform their affection, thereby restoring place as a facilitator of identity as well as hope for healed and whole communities. Loving place translates into loving people, which in turn transforms broken human narratives into restored lives rooted and ordered by their places.

About the Author

Joseph R. Wiebe is Assistant Professor of Religion and Ecology at the University of Alberta, Augustana.