Provincializing the Bible: Faulkner and Postsecular American Literature

Why, in our supposedly secular age, does the Bible feature prominently in so many influential and innovative works of contemporary U.S. literature? More pointedly, why would a book indelibly allied with a long history of institutionalized oppressions play a supporting role—and not simply as an object of critique—in a wide variety of landmark literary representations of marginalized subjectivities? The answers to these questions go beyond mere playful re-appropriations or subversive resignif...