Abyss Or Life Is Simple - Reading Knausgaard Writing Religion

"Min Kamp-or My Struggle in English-is a six-volume novel by Karl Ove Knausgaard and one of the most significant literary works of the young twenty-first century. Published in Norwegian between 2009 and 2011, the year-by-year translation into English of the novels became something of a slow-gathering storm. Ambiguously figured as autobiographical by some, the six volumes present an absorbing first-person narrative of the life of a Norwegian writer, an Everyman of sorts, one with the same name as the author. In its expansiveness, textures, and anti-romanticism, Knausgaard's is a world at once fully disillusioned and thoroughly enchanted. In 2015 a small group of scholars, all admirers of Knausgaard's work, began meeting to discuss the peculiarly "religious" qualities of My Struggle and other writings. Some were interested in Knausgaard's attention to religious topics, his uses of religious histories, objects, and artworks, while others were curious about his capacity to engage various religious moods in ways that were not critical, suspicious, or celebratory. The group wanted to know, in part, what reading these textures of religion in these volumes might say about our times, about writing, about themselves. The Abyss or Life is Simple is the culmination of this collective endeavor-a remarkable collection of interlocking essays on everything from ritual, beauty, writing, and morality to divine plans for the end of the world"--

About the author

Courtney Bender is professor of religion at Columbia University and author of Heaven's Kitchen: Living with Religion at God's Love We Deliver, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Product details

• Authors: Courtney Bender, Courtney Biles Bender, Bender Courtney, Jeremy Biles, Biles Jeremy, Liane Carlson, Joshua Dubler, Hannah C Garvey, Hannah C. Garvey, M Cooper Harriss, M. Cooper Harriss, Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, Dr. Erik Thorstensen, Erik Thorstensen
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.10.2022
• EAN: 9780226821344
• ISBN: 978-0-226-82134-4
• No. of pages: 184
• Subjects: Guides > Self-help, everyday life > Family; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; EDUCATION / General, Education, Education / Educational sciences / Pedagogy