Beyond the Willing Suspension of Disbelief (New Directions in Religion and Literature): Poetic Faith from Coleridge to Tolkien - Hardcover

Michael Tomko

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 178093730X ISBN 13: 9781780937304

Publisher: Bloomsbury 3PL, 2015

Synopsis

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's conception of "the willing suspension of disbelief" marks a pivotal moment in the history of literary theory. Returning to Coleridge's thought and Shakespeare criticism to reconstruct this idea as a form of "poetic faith", Michael Tomko here lays the foundations of a new theologically oriented mode of literary criticism. Bringing Coleridge into dialogue with thinkers ranging from Augustine to Josef Pieper, contemporary critics such as Stephen Greenblatt and Terry Eagleton as well as writers like J.R.R. Tolkien and Wendell Berry, Beyond the Willing Suspension of Disbelief offers a method of reading for post-secular literary criticism that is not only historically and politically aware but also deeply engaged with aesthetic form.

About this title

Review:

Elegantly written, theologically informed, this is top-level critical theory. -- Catholic Herald

Michael Tomko's focussed, lucid, and eloquent study reconsiders Coleridge's seminal formulation in Biographia Literaria: "that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith." ... Tomko makes an excellent case for the centrality of religious faith to Coleridge's thinking and writing. European Romantic Review Tomko offers us an extended meditation on Coleridge's idea of 'the willing suspension of disbelief' in its subsequent use, abuse and history as a critical term ... He writes with great insight ... [A] slim, stimulating and erudite book. -- Theology

About the Author:

Michael Tomko is Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities at Villanova University, USA. He is the author of British Romanticism and the Catholic Question: Religion, History and National Identity, 1778-1829 (Palgrave 2011) and co-editor of Firmly I Believe and Truly: The Spiritual Tradition of Catholic England, 1483-1999 (Oxford UP 2011). '

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury 3PL
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 178093730X
• ISBN 13: 9781780937304
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 184