Christian Heresy, James Joyce, and the Modernist Literary Imagination: Reinventing the Word [Paperback]

Shortlisted for the AAR Book Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion 2023

Organized by heretical movements and texts from theGnostic GospelstoThe Book of Mormon, this book uses the work of James Joyce  particularlyUlyssesandFinnegan's Wake as a prism to explore how the history of Christian heresy remains part of how we read, write, and think about books today.
Erickson argues that the study of classical, medieval, and modern debates over heresy and orthodoxy provide new ways of understanding modernist literature and literary theory. Using Joyce's works as a springboard to explore different perspectives and intersections of 20th century literature and the modern literary and religious imagination, this book gives us new insights into how our modern and secular reading practices unintentionally reflect how we understand our religious histories.

Gregory Ericksonis Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at The Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York University, USA. He is co-editor ofReading Heresy: Religion and Dissent in Literature and Art(2018), co-author ofReligion and Popular Culture: Rescripting the Sacred(2008), and author ofThe Absence of God in Modernist Literature(2007).Erickson's book represents a major intellectual labour: it synthesizes more than a decade of cross-disciplinary study, and Erickson integrates an account of that journey into his argument & Erickson is an ingenious and engaging reader of Joyce & [R]eaders will be amply rewarded for taking the journey with him. Reading Religion

Preface: Why Joyce? Why Heresy? Why Now?
Introduction: Christian Heresy, James Joyce, and the Modernist Imagination
Chapter 1: Five Moments of Schism: A Selective History of Heresy
Chapter 2: Reversals of History: From the First Heretics to James Joyce and Back Again
Chapter 3: Arius, Heretical Christology, and the Anxiety of Artistic Creatil%