Radiance and Secrecy in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead - Softcover

Kohn, Robert E.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1492108588 ISBN 13: 9781492108580

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013

Synopsis

A strange woman walks into church in the middle of a prayer – to get out of the rain, reasons Reverend John Ames. Sixty-seven years old, he is captivated by the young woman, some 40 years his junior, and not many months later marries her. Robert E. Kohn, literary critic, argues that Ames knew this woman when she was a girl, knew her past "to death," as the narrator claims, but for all purposes remained "completely ignorant of it." This is because the truth is couched in secrecy. As the secrecy unfolds, "this poor gray ember of Creation," which Ames calls himself, "turns to radiance."

About this title

About the Author:

Robert E. Kohn, Professor Emeritus of Economics, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, changed his field of study to literary and art criticism after his retirement in 1990. He has published more than twenty-five journal articles in the new field, plus a book on Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 and a book applying Prudentius’s fifth century Latin classic, Psychomachia, to present day American politics. Professor Kohn passed away on April 5, 2014.

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1492108588
• ISBN 13: 9781492108580
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 78