ENGL 402.003, Lit & Society: Faith & Fiction taught by Sandy Schwartz on MWF from 10:10 a.m.-11:00 a.m. in 109 Sackett.
Description: In this course we will consider works of modern fiction (and occasionally non-fiction) that involve issues of religious belief and observance. Most of the readings will be selected from the following modern Christian and Jewish writers (listed alphabetically): Georges Bernanos, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Shusaku Endo, Graham Greene, Soren Kierkegaard, C.S. Lewis, François Mauriac, Flannery O’Connor, Cynthia Ozick, Walker Percy, Chaim Potok, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Isaac Bashevis Singer. Along the way we will be discussing several theological issues that recur in these authors: the existence of God and God’s relationship to creation; the problem of suffering, evil, and death; the justification and survival of faith in modern secular society; the relationship between religion and violence, including the contemporary issue of religiously motivated violence; the conflict between personal conscience and Church/State authority; and the related conflict, especially significant in writers of fiction, between individual imagination and religious orthodoxy. As time permits, we will also look at the representation of religious issues in recent cinema.