Unit information: The Bible and Literature in 2008/09

Unit name	The Bible and Literature
Unit code	THRS20086
Credit points	20
Level of study	I/5
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24)
Unit director	Dr. Jo Carruthers
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None
Co-requisites	None
School/department	Department of Religion and Theology
Faculty	Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

This course explores the influence of the English Bible on literary writings from the early modern period to the present day. It was the main, and often the only, readily available text in the sixteenth century and the Bible and its imagery and language saturated English culture far beyond theological boundaries. It is a text, as Harold Fisch has claimed, that 'the Western imagination cannot escape'. The unit is concerned with familiarizing students with biblical literature and introduces a selection of literary works that appropriate the Bible. We will address questions such as: Why do writers invoke the Bible? How does a biblical allusion 'work' in a piece of literature? How did the Bible function at different times for its readers and in culture at large? We will cover a range of literature from the devotional to the subversive, from the poem to the novel.

Aims:

1. To acquaint students with the major genres, themes and language of the English Bible.

2. To grapple with the issues associated with historically and culturally contextualizing the Bible and its significance.

3. To explore the problems associated with understanding how a literary appropriation of the Bible relates to its originary text.

4. To develop analytical and critical skills through discussion of specific biblical texts and their influence on specific literary works.

Intended Learning Outcomes

1. A knowledge of the content and literary style of the Bible.

2. An understanding of the ways in which readers perception of biblical texts are historically and culturally specific.

3. A theoretical framework for thinking about how biblical texts and their literary appropriations relate to each other.

4. An ability to critically analyse specific literary texts in relation to their biblical sources and the cultural forces at work in the reading and writing process.

Teaching Information

A weekly lecture and a weekly seminar on a specific pairing of biblical text and literary text.

Assessment Information

• One paired presentation leading to the writing-up of a formative essay (2,000 words)

• One summative essay (2,500-3,000 words).

Reading and References

• King James Bible (plus a selection of other early modern translations)

• Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature, ed. by David Lyle Jeffrey (2002).

• The Literary Guide to the Bible, ed. by Robert Alter and Frank Kermode (1987).

• The Blackwell Companion to the Bible and Culture (2006), chapter on Literature.

• Damrosch, Leopold. God's Plot & Man's Stories :Studies in the Fictional Imagination from Milton to Fielding (1985).

• Norton, David. A History of the English Bible as Literature (2000).