Transfiguring Transcendence in Harry Potter, His Dark Materials and Left Behind : Fantasy Rhetorics and Contemporary Visions of Religious Identity / Mike Gray

• VerfasserIn: Gray, Mike Dr.
• Year of Publication: 2013
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Research in contemporary religion ; v. 13.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (310 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

Three recent and commercially successful series of novels employ and adapt the resources of popular fantasy fiction to create visions of religious identity: J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, Phillip Pullman's Dark Materials and Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins' Left Behind series. The act of creating fantasy counter-worlds naturally involves all three stories in the creation of what Mike Gray terms "transfigurations of transcendence": hopeful albeit paradoxical encodings of the ambiguous, non-observable reality whose primary locus in modern society is the societally extra-systemic human individual. Popular fantasy fiction turns out to involve acts of world-creation that are inherently religious and inherently paradoxical.A substantive examination shows that all three are involved in more or less intentional re-narrations of traditional Christian beliefs and narratives. The »atheist« His Dark Materials series does not deny but re-imagines the Christian visions of selfhood; the »traditionalist« Left Behind series does not simply replicate but modifies its own declared values; the apparent secularity of the Harry Potter series is shaped by its creative reception of Christian patterns and narratives. While the stories' visions of selfhood clearly clash, the basic paradoxes involved in their struggle to articulate transcendence expose significant parallels and a productive conversation with the Christian tradition.It is not simply that popular fantasy fiction is theologically relevant - the Christian Heilsgeschichte, too, proves to be highly relevant in popular culture. However, while far from obsolescent, models of religious identity in contemporary society require criticism and creativity - and, as evinced most powerfully in the Harry Potter stories, a flair for constructive engagement with paradox.

Table of Contents

Cover; Title Page; Copyright; Table of Contents; Abbreviations; Gender Usage; Body; Introduction: Religiously Iconic Phenomena ; 1. Harry Potter, His Dark Materials and Left Behind; 1.1 Three Plots; 1.1.1 Harry Potter; 1.1.2 His Dark Materials; 1.1.3 Left Behind; 1.2 Genre: Initial Categorizations; 1.3 The Authors; 1.3.1 Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins; 1.3.2 Philip Pullman; 1.3.3 Joanne Rowling; 2. Reception History; 2.1 Publishing and Popular Recognition; 2.1.1 Timeframe and Publishing Data; 2.1.2 Reception and Publishing Phenomena; 2.1.2.1 Harry Potter; 2.1.2.2 Left Behind

2.1.2.3 His Dark Materials2.1.2.4 Observations; 2.2 Academic Reception; 2.2.1 HP and the Necessity of Interpretive Mediation; 2.2.2 LB and the Religious Right; 2.2.3 HDM and Religious Skepticism; 2.3 Religious Controversies; 2.3.1 Left Behind and "Hard-Line" Christian Faith; 2.3.2 His Dark Materials and "Hard-Line" Christian Skepticism; 2.3.3 Harry Potter and Ambivalent Christian Faith; 3. LB, HDM and HP as Interconnecting, Religiously Iconic Phenomena; 3.1 Interconnecting Religious Phenomena; 3.2 Contemporary Phenomena; 3.3 Religious Iconicity of the Problem ; Theoretical Constructs

4. Fantasy Fiction and Religion - Systems Theoretical Insights4.1 Fantasy Worlds; 4.1.1 Fantasy Fiction and World Creation; 4.1.1.1 Worlds as Horizons of Meaning; 4.1.1.2 The World of Science; 4.1.1.3 Fantasy Worlds; 4.1.1.3.1 Virtually Impossible Worlds; 4.1.1.3.2 Durst and the Cultural Status of the Impossible; 4.1.1.3.3 Bakhtin, Carnival and Virtual Inversions; 4.1.1.4 The "World of Christianity," Heilsgeschichten and the Eucatastrophe; 4.1.1.5 Four Moments in the Fantasy Heilsgeschichte; 4.1.1.6 Narratological and Religious Reductions?; 4.2 Religion and the World's Transcendence

4.2.1 Religion as Orientation vis-à-vis Transcendence4.2.2 Religion as a Concrete Cultural Phenomenon; 4.2.2.1 Specifically Religious Horizons; 4.2.2.2 Implicitly Religious Horizons; 4.2.2.3 Implicitly Religious Communication; 4.2.2.4 Connecting Explicit and Implicit Religious Horizons; 4.2.3 Orientation as the Criterion for (Successful) Religion; 4.3 Linking Religion and Fantasy Fiction; 4.3.1 Miracle Story and Fantasy : Similarities and Differences; 4.3.2 Heilsgeschichte and "Erlösung von der Gesellschaft" ; 4.3.3 Selfhood: The Central Topos of Transcendence

5. Religious Identity and Fantasy Fiction5.1 Religious Identity; 5.1.1 From Identification to Identity; 5.1.2 Religious Identity, Luhmann and Ricoeur; 5.1.2.1 From Luhmann to Ricoeur: Incompatible Systems?; 5.1.2.2 Ricoeur's (Proto-) Religious Ontology of the Self; 5.1.2.3 From Ricoeur back to Luhmann: Communication and Call; 5.1.3 From Religious Identity back to Religious Identification ; 5.1.3.1 Religious Identification and Theological Categories; 5.1.3.2 Two Pitfalls; 5.1.3.3 Excursus: Narrative Identity; 5.2 Narrative, "Ethical Criticism" and the Religious Reader

5.2.1.1 Wayne Booth and Ethical Criticism