Theological Anthropology and the Great Literary Genres: Understanding the Human Story [Hardcover]

The storytelling impulse lies very deep within human cultures; indeed, it is fundamental to the very concept of human culture itself. What, then, is humankind, according to the great story types of tragedy, epic, and comedy? What do each of these genres say about us, and what transcends us? Building on critical discussions of the great genres of the Western literary tradition, Michael P. Jensen argues that each of these genres contains a theo-anthropologya theological understanding of the human creature. He then shows how questions of identity, purpose, and destiny are addressed within each genre, concluding that human existence is a storied nature shaped by the various literary forms that have fostered human cultural imagination. These genres provide crucial keys to vital anthropological and theological questions when put in conversation with Christian theology; as Jensen shows, the Christian story, the gospel, shares many observations about the human condition with the great genres, but offers a different sense of ending.Michael P. Jensen is rector of St. Marks Anglican Church, Darling Point in Sydney, Australia, and teaches theology at Sydney College of Divinity and Australian College of Theology.Stories belong to various genres, and human identity is story-shaped. Literary theorists and theologians of the late twentieth century got that far. Michael P. Jensens important book goes further, however, suggesting that literary forms are themselves formative of human being. If genres are sources of the self, it is important to know in what story  and in what kind of story  one is caught up: comedy or tragedy, to name but two. Christian theology maintains that we are caught up in gospel: the story of Gods self-communication to a lost world. In a secular age filled with dystopian fiction and drained of transcendent meaning, the Bible tells a story with ontological import that inscribes humanity into the narrative of the divine, namely, the Fathers self-glÓ