1 6 S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 8 - 1 S p r i n g 2 0 2 2 1 Religion and Literature: An Introduction A traditional understanding of religion includes belief in an Absolute God as a route to salvation or redemption of the soul. This conception of religion is best expressed in literature that serves the theological aim of fostering dependence of man upon God for his redemption from the travails of this physical world. Morality plays, for instance, reflect this understanding of religion most explicitly as these are a form of religious theatre focusing on the life of the individual Christian and his salvation. These plays typically deal with the individual’s actions, his seduction by seven deadly sins leading to his fall, repentance, and ultimately salvation; thereby ending with the explicit message that salvation cannot be achieved without the intervention of the absolute power. The Castle of Perseverance (c. 1405–1425), a masterpiece of morality plays, is built on the religious doctrine that ends are governed by means, that is, only a good and virtuous life can reserve a place in heaven. Written by an anonymous playwright, this play has Mankind, the protagonist, finding himself at the moral crossroads during his spiritual journey. Though the singular pronoun is used for Mankind, he is symbolic of the entire human race. The protagonist Everyman in another archetypal morality play, Everyman, is also representative of all human beings who are blind to spiritual matters. Everyman, with all the worldly resources, leads a life drowned in sin. But when death knocks at his door, he realizes that he has wasted his entire life as he never prepared himself to meet his death. This play, built on the same premise of moral causation, gives a similar religious message: “Ye think sin in the beginning full sweet/ Which in the end causeth the soul to weep/ When the body lieth in clay” (Anonymous 1485, 1). Thus, morality plays are a veritable index of religion in its traditional sense. Similarly, religious poetry of the seventeenth century affirms the worth of virtue as a necessary means of salvation. George Herbert (1957a, 128), in his famous poem Virtue, asserts, “[o]nely a sweet and vertuous soul/ Like season’d timber, never gives.” However, a shift of focus from the distant and objective view of religious concepts of sin and salvation to one’s own frailties and spiritual journey is seen in this age, emphasizing personal involvement and relationship with God. For instance, John Donne, in The Litanie, pleads with God to purge his “vicious tinctures” (1933, 308, line 8) like “youths fires of pride and lust” (1933, 309, line 22), “thirst or scorne of fame” (1933, 313, line 153), and “entanglings… by power, love, knowledge” (1933, 309, line 32). Donne’s Holy Sonnets are another expression of his personal anguish and pain: “Oh I shall soone despaire, when I doe see/ That thou love’st mankind well, yet wilt not chuse me” (Donne 1957, 83). Herbert’s poetry also illustrates the theme of inner conflict between religion and worldly pleasures at a personal level: “But as I rav’d and grew more fierce and wilde/ At every word,/ Me thoughts I heard one calling, Child!/ And I reply’d, My Lord” (Herbert 1957b, 135). The image of God in Herbert’s poetry is not impersonal but has the characteristic of being father-like. For example, towards the end of the same poem, the poet asserts that he “heard” God calling him a “child” (Herbert 1957b, 135). Though the focus in religious poetry shifts within the context of a deeply felt relationship with God, the essential nature of both morality plays, and religious poetry is the same, which is to present a world where man’s religion is governed by his faith in the divine presence and a virtuous life directed towards salvation. Later, a new outlook on religion stimulated fresh interpretations of the above-described religious literature in literary-critical circles. For example, poet-critic T. S. Eliot views religious poetry as “deliberately and defiantly” religious literature. He believes that this kind of literature is a contrast to “unconsciously” religious literature which is not “guided by any theological principles” (Eliot 1935, 103). Northrop Frye holds a similar view when he asserts that the anagogic [1] perspective is not necessarily implied of an “apocalyptic epic” but of any poem “we happen to be reading” (Frye 1957, 121). Frye contends that this understanding involves looking at literature from the “circumference” instead of the “center” of religion (Frye 1957, 122). This further explains that when the writer does not present the subject of religion from the center, he does not give it a privileged position in his writings. This view is also expounded by Jacques Derrida, who believes in destabilizing the metaphysical thought that prioritizes one concept over another. For instance, much contemporary literature evinces a free play of the elements in the God/ Man binary where the Absolute God no longer enjoys the privileged first place. According to Derrida, metaphysicians have been unjustified in privileging one side of the binary and marginalizing the other: “All metaphysicians from Plato to Rousseau, Descartes to Husserl, have proceeded in this way, conceiving good to be before evil, the positive before the negative, the pure before the impure, the simple before the complex, the essential before the accidental, the imitated before the imitation, etc.” (Derrida 1977, 93).
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