A one-way ticket to paradise? : Adapting the bible in Venedikt Erofeev’s 'Moskva-Petushki' (1973), Stephen Mulrine's 'Moscow Stations' (1993), and A.L. Kennedy's 'Paradise' (2004)
- In the early 21st century, scientists once more declared God a delusion and announced the end of faith, boosting the current critique of religious belief known as 'New Atheism'. Yet the contemporary British and Irish novel engage with religion in various forms, and religion has indeed "returned", Andrew Tate argues, "to the study of literature". The Bible in particular proves a rich source for novelists as different as Colm Tóibín, Zadie Smith, and Philip Pullman among others. Where Colm Tóibín's 'The Testament of Mary' (2012) offers a fictional memoir by the mother of God, depicting the Virgin Mary as "a powerful, unsparing figure" ('Guardian'), Zadie Smith's 'NW' (2012) describes the lives of its two female protagonists against the backdrop of the stories of Mary and Elizabeth in the Gospel of Luke. And Philip Pullman's bestselling trilogy 'His Dark Materials' (1995- 2000) is a re-writing of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' (1667) that "only really makes sense" according to Tate "if the reader has a detailed knowledge of the biblical scriptures against which it writes". Despite being written from a very critical, ironic or atheist stance, all these novels rely on the Bible as an intertext in crucial ways. The Bible, in other words, is once more living up to its ancient reputation as "the Book of Books", "the Urtext of Western literature".
Author: | Caroline Lusin |
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URN: | urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-491168 |
ISSN: | 1864-8533 |
Parent Title (German): | Komparatistik online : komparatistische Internet-Zeitschrift / Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen |
Publisher: | Justus-Liebig-Univ. |
Place of publication: | Gießen |
Editor: | Johannes Fehrle, Mark Schmitt |
Document Type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of Publication (online): | 2019/02/14 |
Date of first Publication: | 2019/01/10 |
Publishing Institution: | Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg |
Release Date: | 2019/02/15 |
GND Keyword: | Adaption <Literatur>; Bibel; Religion; Erofeev, Viktor; Moskva-Petuški; Mulrine, Stephen; Moscow stations; Kennedy, A. L.; Paradise |
Volume: | 2018 |
Issue: | [Heft 1 =] Adaptation as cultural translation |
Page Number: | 17 |
First Page: | 8 |
Last Page: | 24 |
HeBIS-PPN: | 445816546 |
Dewey Decimal Classification: | 8 Literatur / 80 Literatur, Rhetorik, Literaturwissenschaft / 800 Literatur und Rhetorik |
Sammlungen: | CompaRe | Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft |
Zeitschriften / Jahresberichte: | Komparatistik online : komparatistische Internet-Zeitschrift / Komparatistik online 2018 : Transpositionen Adaptation as cultural translation |
: | urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-491142 |
Licence (German): | Deutsches Urheberrecht |