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Binding the Ghost: Theology, Mystery, and the Transcendence of Literature
Binding the Ghost is both manifesto and example of a new variety of reading that centers a theological perspective in considering what literature actually does. Neither dogmatic nor apologetic, sectarian or denominational, this mode of reading acknowledges the inherently charged strangeness of writing and fiction, whereby authors have the ability to seemingly create entire universes from words alone.

Ed Simon considers the theological depth, resonance, and mystery of the acts of reading and writing. His lyrical, incisive essays cover subjects such as the incarnational poetics of reading a physical book as opposed to reading online, the historical relationship between monotheism and the development of the alphabet, how the novel and Protestantism developed interiority within people, the occult significance of punctuation, and the functional similarities between poetry and prayer. Binding the Ghost presents a humane sacralization of reading and writing that takes into account the wonder, enchantment, and mystery of the very idea of poetry and fiction.

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Binding the Ghost: Theology, Mystery, and the Transcendence of Literature
Binding the Ghost is both manifesto and example of a new variety of reading that centers a theological perspective in considering what literature actually does. Neither dogmatic nor apologetic, sectarian or denominational, this mode of reading acknowledges the inherently charged strangeness of writing and fiction, whereby authors have the ability to seemingly create entire universes from words alone.

Ed Simon considers the theological depth, resonance, and mystery of the acts of reading and writing. His lyrical, incisive essays cover subjects such as the incarnational poetics of reading a physical book as opposed to reading online, the historical relationship between monotheism and the development of the alphabet, how the novel and Protestantism developed interiority within people, the occult significance of punctuation, and the functional similarities between poetry and prayer. Binding the Ghost presents a humane sacralization of reading and writing that takes into account the wonder, enchantment, and mystery of the very idea of poetry and fiction.

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Binding the Ghost: Theology, Mystery, and the Transcendence of Literature

Binding the Ghost: Theology, Mystery, and the Transcendence of Literature

by Ed Simon
Binding the Ghost: Theology, Mystery, and the Transcendence of Literature
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Binding the Ghost: Theology, Mystery, and the Transcendence of Literature

Binding the Ghost: Theology, Mystery, and the Transcendence of Literature

by Ed Simon

Overview

Binding the Ghost is both manifesto and example of a new variety of reading that centers a theological perspective in considering what literature actually does. Neither dogmatic nor apologetic, sectarian or denominational, this mode of reading acknowledges the inherently charged strangeness of writing and fiction, whereby authors have the ability to seemingly create entire universes from words alone.

Ed Simon considers the theological depth, resonance, and mystery of the acts of reading and writing. His lyrical, incisive essays cover subjects such as the incarnational poetics of reading a physical book as opposed to reading online, the historical relationship between monotheism and the development of the alphabet, how the novel and Protestantism developed interiority within people, the occult significance of punctuation, and the functional similarities between poetry and prayer. Binding the Ghost presents a humane sacralization of reading and writing that takes into account the wonder, enchantment, and mystery of the very idea of poetry and fiction.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781506478777
Publisher: 1517 Media
Publication date: 04/19/2022
Pages: 250
Product dimensions: 6.25(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Ed Simon holds a PhD in English from Lehigh University. He is a staff writer for The Millions, and his work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Paris Review Daily, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Poetry, The Washington Post, The Rumpus, Salon, Lit Hub, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Religion Dispatches, Newsweek, Killing the Buddha, The Revealer, The Public Domain Review, JSTOR Daily, Tablet, History News Network, Atlas Obscura, Aeon, The New Republic, and The New York Times, among several others. He is also the author of several books, including America and Other Fictions: On Radical Faith and Post-Religion; Furnace of This World, or, 36 Observations about Goodness; and Printed in Utopia: The Renaissance's Radicalism, and is the co-editor of The God Beat: What Journalism Says about Faith and Why It Matters.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Attend Muse to Our Sacred Song 1

Part 1 The Incantations of Poetry

1 Moved the Universe 11

2 Prayer Is Poetry 21

3 Recall, Orpheus 35

4 Poetry before the Fall; or, The Pathetic Fallacy in Paradise 41

5 Poetry without Poets; or, Spirit Is a Human Earth 55

6 Another Person's Words: Poetry Is Always the Speaker 69

7 Marks of Significance: On Punctuation's Occult Power 81

8 Lost in Lexicography 91

9 Possess the Origin of All Poems 111

10 Poetry Is Prayer 121

Part 2 The Conjurations of Prose

11 Missives from Another World: Literature of Parallel Universes 135

12 When Books Read You: A Defense of Bibliomancy 149

13 On Pandemic and Literature 163

14 Neo-Donatists in Eden 177

15 Interrogating the Interrogative 189

16 Novel Prognostications; or, What's the Zeitgeist Saying Now? 197

17 Interiority Combustion Engine 211

18 Jay Gatsby Is Real 227

19 The Varieties of Metafictional Experience 231

20 The Final Sentence 243

Part 3 Greatest of Characters

21 God Created Consciousness in Fiction 255

22 In the Hands of Angry Gods 261

23 Breaking the Third Commandment: An Essay on All the Names of God 271

24 Another Mans System: On the Science and Art of Engineering Deities 285

25 Binding the Ghost: On the Physicality of Literature 303

Acknowledgments 313

Appendix: Punic Encomium-a Style Guide 315

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General Christianity
Christianity - General & Miscellaneous

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