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Informationen zum Autor Paul S. Fiddes is Principal of Regent's Park College in the University of Oxford, and a University Research Lecturer in Theology. He is the author of a number of books and articles, including The Creative Suffering of God (1988), Past Event and Present Salvation: The Christian Idea of Atonement (1989), and Freedom and Limit: A Dialogue Between Literature and Christian Doctrine (1991). Klappentext This book brings Christian theology, creative literature and literary critical theory into dialogue on the theme of "the end". Where appropriate it also considers recent scientific views on the nature of time. 'Postmodern' critical theorists and many other writers emphasize the 'open' nature of endings, but this book suggests that the mixture of openness and closure in Christian eschatology not only offers a coherent sense of an ending, but may make it possible to construct endings in the here and now. On the way to this conclusion the book provides an exegesis of novels, plays and poems by such writers as John Fowles, Julian Barnes, Doris Lessing, Samuel Beckett, T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and Shakespeare. Among critical theorists, postmodern and otherwise, it considers especially the ideas of Frank Kermode, Northrop Frye, Jacques Derrida and Paul Ricoeur. The author also examines the main themes of Christian eschatology - such as death, parousia, resurrection, human destiny and the nature of eternity - and offers a critical view of the doctrines of the last things produced by major modern theologians, including Jürgen Moltmann and Wolfhart Pannenberg. Through this dialogue the book aims to form an image of the eternal 'wholeness' of persons in the life of the triune God that takes seriously the deconstruction of images of domination. Zusammenfassung Brings Christian theology! creative literature and literary critical theory into dialogue on the theme of 'the end'. This book also considers scientific views on the nature of time. It provides an exegesis of novels! plays and poems by such writers as John Fowles! Julian Barnes! Doris Lessing! Samuel Beckett! T S Eliot! and Virginia Woolf. Inhaltsverzeichnis Acknowledgements. Part I: Facing the End: . 1. The Problem of Closure: John Fowles' the French Lieutenant's Woman and Julian Barnes' Flaubert's Parrot. 2. Theology and Literature - A Dialogue. 3. The End Organizes the Human Story: Frank Kermode. 4. The End Discloses a Desired World: Northrop Frye. 5. Biblical Eschatology and Openness. 6. Closure and Openness in Ending. Part II: Deferment and Hope: . 7. The End Defers Meaning: Jacques Derrida. 8. Death and the Other. 9. Openness and Relativism. 10. The End Opens Hope: Paul Ricoeur. 11. Hope and a Passion for the Possible. 12. Hoping in the Face of Death. Part III: Taking Death Seriously: . 13. A Journey to Nothingness: Shakespeare's King Lear. 14. Human Surplus and Excess. 15. Images of a Desirable and Undesirable World. 16. The Configuring of Time. 17. Looking Upon Death. 18. Death the Last Enemy. 19. Creation from Nothing. Part IV: A Question of Identity: . 20. Resurrection and the Idea of Replication. 21. Problems About Identity. 22. Closing the Gap? A Modified Dualism. 23. The Person and the Finality of Death. 24. Survival and Relationships: Doris Lessing's Memoirs of A Survivor. 25. Corporate Resurrection. 26. The Identity of the Self: Lessing's the Making of the Representative for Planet 8. 27. The Making of the Person. Part V: the Eternal Moment: . 28. The Problem of Fragmentation By Time: T.S. Eliot's 'Ash Wednesday'. 29. The Problem of Isolation in Time: Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dall...
