Customer Reviews

Canon and Creativity: Modern Writing and the Authority of Scripture (The Franz Rosenzweig Lecture Series)

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For those familiar with Alter's other works on Biblical literature this will be a joy. It focuses on how three great modern writers use the Bible to create their own art. Although the three writers, Kafka, Bialik and Joyce use the Bible differently than traditional writers - they treat the Bible with the utmost respect. Alters shows how the great moderns appreciate the wonders of the Bible and use it to enhance their art. Canon and Creativity will help you understand the artistic process of the moderns and the ancients. This is a book that the writer clearly enjoyed writing - and the intelligent reader will enjoy reading.

Alter opens his book this way,"Over the last quarter of a century ,the term canon,which previously had been restricted to the body of Sacred Scripture approved by ecclesiastical authority, attained general currency in academic circles as designation for the corpus of secular literary works implicity or explicitly endorsed by established cultural authority as worthy of preservation through reading and study." He speaks shortly afterwards about his goals in the work ," I want to explore the dynamics of canonicity,attending to the way the exemplary canonical corpus of the Western tradition,the Bible is assimilated and reused by poets and writers of fiction." Alter goes on after examining " The Double Canonicity of the Hebrew Bible " to explore the way three ' secular 'writers Kafka, Bialik and Joyce put the 'Canon' to use for their own creative purpose.

For those who love 'literary criticism ' at its best this is a work well- worth reading.