Religion is a multi-faceted phenomenon that includes doctrines, stories, rituals, and communal practices. What happens when a poet or novelist appropriates a story from the Bible, a teaching, or liturgical practice from Christianity or Judaism and reshapes it according to her or his own imagination? How do writers exercise poetic license with religion, affirming some parts of it while pushing back on others? In this five-part class students look at five themes of perennial interest to Christianity and Judaism—love, death, evil, suffering, and forgiveness—that have also intrigued poets, novelists, essayists, and short-story writers. Students will read excerpts from the Bible, the liturgy, and theology in comparison with creative writing from Homer to John Donne to Emily Dickinson to Mary Gordon, among many others. Each class will turn on a small anthology of texts from the worlds of religion and literature arranged to invite comparison and contrast. Professor Ernie Rubinstein holds a PhD in comparative religion from Northwestern University. He is author of the book, Religion and the Muse: The Vexed Relation Between Religion and Western Literature (SUNY Press, 2007). He has taught in NYU’s School of Professional Studies since 1995. This class is adapted from another course he regularly teaches there on the same topic. Please register! Limit of 15 students!
New York City, NY; NYC