Bøger i Studies in Literature and Reli serien

Reluctant Witnesses: Jews and the Christian Imagination is an analysis of the ancient Christian myth that casts Jews as a 'witness-people', and this myth's presence in contemporary religious discourse. It treats diverse products of the Christian imagination, including systematic theology, works of fiction, and popular writings on biblical prophecy. The book demonstrates that the witness-people myth, which was first articulated by Augustine and which determined official attitudes towards Jews in medieval Christendom, remains a powerful force in the Christian imagination.

Beginning with the insights of the 'canonical criticism' of Brevard Childs and James Sanders, this book explores the canon of the Bible through readings in literature, art and cinema. It places the Bible within the concerns of contemporary feminist thought, postmodern anxiety and modern apocalyptic. It returns us to a sense of the centrality of the Biblical canon in the present of critical thought and popular culture, expanding the notion of 'reading' to picture and film.

In this adventurous and wide-ranging book, Harris weaves an intriguing tale of Franciscan Missionary theatre in early colonial Mexico and Indigenous dramatizations of the theme of conquest in modern Mexico. He offers fresh readings of representations of the conquest of Mexico by Dryden and Artaud and engages in a lively dialogue with Bakhtin's insistence that drama is a monological genre. Combining careful scholarship and an entertaining style, he develops his study of the theatre into a thoughtful and original meditation on the ethics of cross-cultural encounter.