Incarnation: Contemporary Writers on the New Testament [Hardcover]

Alfred Corn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 13, 1990

The Bible is more than a work of religious revelations, it is also one of the most influential books in the canon of Western civilizations. In Incarnation, alfred Corn has collected essays by some of the most illustrious writers of our time, exploring the ways in which particular books of the Bible have influenced them: John Updike on Matthew; Mary Gordon on Mark; and more. Together their works provide a fresh, personal, and imaginastive look at these ancient texts.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

n this earnest, scholarly complement to David Rosenberg's Congregation: Contemporary Writers Read the Jewish Bible , Reynolds Price maintains that John bar Zebedee, the Beloved of Jesus, authored the Gospel according to John: "The suggestion that a fisherman who studied with Jesus might not have been as competent a theologian as his modern doubters is amusingly small-minded." John Hersey is dismayed by the Revelation of Saint John the Divine: "The book allows--almost commands--doing nothing about social ills and dangers; God will take care of those things." Marina Warner points to misogyny in Paul's First Epistle to Timothy; and Anthony Hecht, a Jew, cites specific acts of anti-Semitism committed in the name of Christ but finds that Jesus himself, in words reported in Luke, makes "the best and most telling answer to the solipsism and contemptuous repudiation of the Law of Moses by Paul." In the book's most personal essay, David Plante recalls his homosexual love for his roommate at a Jesuit college, contemplates Saint Paul's enormous love for Christ and tackles the contradictory nature of Paul, who damned the flesh yet used images of the body to praise the soul. Corn is the author of The Metamorphoses of Metaphor.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This collection of essays, intended as a companion to Congregation: Contemporary Writers Read the Jewish Bible ( LJ 11/15/87), is not a work of scholarly introduction or exposition but of reflection. Each contributor interacts with an assigned text to determine the contemporary significance of the New Testament. While some more or less repeat the substance of their text, others deemphasize what is written and instead focus on their own response. There are, of course, treatments that combine the two. Views of the New Testament writings evoke reactions both positive and negative. There are occasional insights worth searching for, but as a whole this work is recommended only with reservations.
- Craig W. Beard, Harding Univ. Lib., Searcy, Ark.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; 1 edition (June 13, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670825042
• ISBN-13: 978-0670825042
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,394,508 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

ABOUT ALFRED CORN

Alfred Corn was born in Bainbridge, Georgia, in 1943. He grew up in Valdosta, Georgia, and received his B.A. in French literature from Emory University in 1965. He was awarded an M.A. in French literature from Columbia University in 1967, his degree work including a year spent in Paris on a Fulbright Fellowship and two years of teaching in the French Department at Columbia College. His first book of poems, All Roads at Once, appeared in 1976, followed by A Call in the Midst of the Crowd (1978), The Various Light (1980), Notes from a Child of Paradise (1984), The West Door (1988), Autobiographies (1992). His seventh book of poems, titled Present, appeared in 1997, along with a novel titled Part of His Story, and a study of prosody, The Poem's Heartbeat. Stake: Selected Poems, 1972-1992, appeared in 1999, followed by Contradictions in 2002. He has also published a collection of critical essays titled The Metamorphoses of Metaphor (1988) and a work of art criticism, Aaron Rose Photographs (Abrams, 2001). In 2008, his Atlas: Selected Essays, 1989-2007 was published by the University of Michigan Press. Fellowships and prizes awarded for his poetry include the Levinson Prize from Poetry magazine, a Guggenheim fellowship, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, an Award in Literature from the Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and one from the Academy of American Poets. He has taught at the City University of New York, Columbia, Yale, Connecticut College, the University of Cincinnati, U.C.L.A., Ohio State University, Hofstra University, Oklahoma State University, and the University of Tulsa. A contributor to The New York Times Book Review and The Nation, he also writes art criticism for Art in America and ARTnews magazines. He has twice been a fellow of the Rockefeller Study and Conference Center at Bellagio and held the Amy Clampitt Residency in Lenox, Massachusetts, for 2004-2005. In London, later that year, he taught a course for the Poetry School, and one for the Arvon Foundation at Totleigh Barton, Devon. His play Lowell's Bedlam opened in the spring of 2011 at Pentameters Theatre in London. He spends part of every year in the U.K., and for the spring term of 2012, he will be a resident fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge University, working on a translation of Rilke's Duino Elegies. His blog can be found at http://topicsevent.blogspot.com