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 ac...

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