The Fact of the Cage

Reading and Redemption In David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest"
1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-0-367-69887-4
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 204 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 307 g

Reihe: Routledge Studies in Contemporary Literature

David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest raised expectations of what a novel might do. As he understood fiction to aim at what it means to be human, so he hoped his work might relieve the loneliness of human suffering. In that light, The Fact of the Cage shows how Wallace’s masterpiece dramatizes the condition of encagement and how it comes to be met by "Abiding" and through inter-relational acts of speaking and hearing, touching, and facing. Revealing Wallace’s theology of a "boneless Christ," The Fact of the Cage wagers that reading such a novel as Infinite Jest makes available to readers the redemption glimpsed in its pages, that reading fiction has ethical and religious significance—in short, that reading Infinite Jest makes one better. As such, Plank’s work takes steps to defend the ethics of fiction, the vital relation between religion and literature, and why one just might read at all.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Plank, Karl A.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Strömungen & Epochen
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsethik, Weltethos
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur Amerikanische Literatur

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: In Praise of One Good Reading

1. Reading to Become Better: An Approach to Infinite Jest

2. The Predicament of Encagement

3. Contending with the Cage: Abiding and Breaking Through

4. The Redemption of Boneless Christs

5. The Redemption of the Reader

Über Autor(innen)

Karl A. Plank is the J.W. Cannon Professor of Religious Studies at Davidson College, USA. The author of Paul and the Irony of Affliction and Mother of the Wire Fence: Inside and Outside the Holocaust, he has published studies in journals such as Religion and Literature, Literature and Theology, Anglican Theological Review, and Cistercian Studies.