Theology and the Mythic Sensibility
Human Myth-Making and Divine Creativity
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Hardback
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781009542609
Number of Pages: 232
Published: 21/11/2024
Width: 15.9 cm
Height: 23.5 cm
How do stories change the way we see both ourselves and the world? That question is the starting-point of this accomplished new contribution to narrative theology. Dr Shamel addresses what he calls mythopoieic fantasy: the fictionalised myth-making occupying those twilight borderlands between contemporary secularity and a religious worldview. Exploring key writers such as J. R. R. Tolkien, Terry Pratchett, and J. K. Rowling, the author argues that the mythic turn of popular culture signals an ongoing hunger for something 'more': more dense, more present, more 'real'. For Dr Shamel, mythopoieic fantasy and Christian theology represent the same human impulse: a desire to participate in the divine. Despite the avowed secularity of many authors of fantasy literature, the creativity of their mythic fictions reveals something of the theological character of all human making. The stories we tell in order to encounter the world as meaningful, argues Dr Shamel, in fact emerge within a theological horizon.
Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I. Myth/Making: 1. Mythic sensibility; 2. Making; 3. Creation & participation; Part II. Myth & Culture: 4. The mythopoieic roots of theology; 5. Making toward God; 6. Mythopoiesis and difference; 7. Taste and see; Part III. All in Christ: 8. The mythos of Christ; 9. Baptism; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.