Defamiliarizing the popular image of the bible in some contemporary rewritings in english.
This paper focuses on the ways some recent British and Irish rewritings of the Bible estrange what has become the publicly accepted and dominant image of the biblical text. Recently, the Bible has been given the status of "home scripture" (Sherwood, Yvonne. 2012. Biblical Blaspheming: Trials of the...
| Publicado en: | Journal of Literary Semantics Vol. 47; no. 1; pp. 1 - 21 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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De Gruyter
Apr2018
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=129774454&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 129774454 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 03417638 9EL jtl: Journal of Literary Semantics issn: 03417638 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Apr2018 vid: 47 iid: 1 pid: 1734 pub: De Gruyter artinfo: ui: 129774454 10.1515/jls-2018-0001 ppf: 1 ppct: 20 formats: tig: atl: Defamiliarizing the popular image of the bible in some contemporary rewritings in english. aug: au: Rychter, Ewa affil: Angelus Silesius University of Applied Sciences, Wałbrzych, Poland su: Bible Revision (Writing process) Linguistics Cultural literacy Social order Democracy Violence sug: subj: Bible Revision (Writing process) Linguistics Cultural literacy Social order Democracy Violence keyword: contemporary novel defamiliarization estrangement rewriting the Bible ab: This paper focuses on the ways some recent British and Irish rewritings of the Bible estrange what has become the publicly accepted and dominant image of the biblical text. Recently, the Bible has been given the status of "home scripture" (Sherwood, Yvonne. 2012. Biblical Blaspheming: Trials of the Sacred for a Secular Age. Cambridge: CUP) and become a domesticated and conservative text, a rather placid cultural/literary monument, an important foundation of democracy, a venerable religious document judged more tolerant and liberal than other scriptures. Though the Bible used to be perceived as an explosive text, peppered with potentially offensive passages, today its enmity is neutralised either by linking the Bible with ancient times or by relating it to people's religious beliefs and by entrenching its more scandalous parts within the discourse of tolerance. It is such an anodyne image of the Bible that the biblical rewritings of Roberts, Winterson, Barnes, Crace, Pullman, Tóibin, Alderman, Diski defamiliarize. By showing biblical events through the eyes of various non-standard focalizers, those novels disrupt the formulaic patterns of the contemporary perception of the Bible. It is through these strange perspectives that we observe the critical moment when the overall meaning and the role of the biblical text is established and the biblical story is actually written down. Importantly, it is also the moment when somebody moulds the scripture according to their ideas and glosses over all the complexities, violence and immorality related to the events the biblical text describes. Also, contemporary biblical rewritings defamiliarize the currently popular image of the Bible - that of a whitewashed text which inculcates morality, conserves social order and teaches love and tolerance, by employing images of disintegration, dirt and contagion as well as by constructing a figure of a fervent believer in the Bible and its ideas. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y dt: @attributes: year: 2018 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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