Christian Heresy, James Joyce, and the Modernist Literary Imagination

"Organized by heretical movements and texts from the Gnostic Gospels to The Book of Mormon , this book uses Joyce's work-especially Ulysses and Finnegans Wake -as a prism that offers multiple perspectives on how the history of Christian heresy remains a part of how we read, write, and think about bodies, books, language, time, and literature. The book argues that the study of classical, medieval, and modern debates over heresy and orthodoxy offers new ways of understanding modern literature and literary theory, and that our modern and 'secular' reading practices unintentionally reflect on how we understand our religious histories. By studying ancient, medieval, and modern clashes over religious orthodoxy and heresy as essentially literary events, we find new and unexpected models of understanding 20th-century literature and the modern literary and religious imagination. In so doing, the book demonstrates how reading and thinking about James Joyce can help us study these ideas and practices. Rather than being the subject, Joyce's works offer multiple perspectives, angles, and intersections that give us new tools in which to look at how the history of Christian heresy is still part of how we read, write, and think about books today."--