Divine Encounters: Exploring Religious Themes in Literature

Dear Colleagues,

The study of Religion and Literature is a research field that has boomed in recent years, reflecting the increasing interest of society in the Sciences of Religions. In this Special Issue, we would like to provide a forum for discussion on the relations between two crucial human concerns: the religious impulse and the literary forms of any era, place, or language. Moreover, the development of studies on Mythological Criticism and the definition of myth as an encounter of the divine in the human sphere (Losada 2022) has shown that literature can be an important resource for the study of the role of religion in culture and society.

With this aim, we are pleased to invite you to submit essays that consider the literature of any time or place in conjunction with important mythological, religious, or theological issues that emerge from the literary text or that illuminate it. This Special Issue is also open to receiving essays in which mythology, religion, and/or theology is elucidated, extended, or challenged by literature. No mythological, religious, or theological perspective will be excluded. Furthermore, the articles can deal with a wide range of religious characters, myths, rituals, themes, motifs, plots, ideas, aesthetics, etc., as shown in literary works belonging to any genre.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Sciences of Religions
• Comparative Religions and Literatures
• Theology
• Mythological Criticism
• Mythology

We request that prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200-300 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send the proposal to the Guest Editor or to the Assistant Editor of Religions. Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editor for the purposes of ensuring a proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Best regards,

References:

Auden, W.H. “Postscript: Christianity and Art.” The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays. New York: Random House, 1962. 456-461.

Blodgett, Jan. Protestant Evangelical Literary Culture and Contemporary Society. Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1997.

Bockting, Ineke, Jennifer Kilgore-Caradec, Cathy Parcs. Editors. Poetry and Religion: Figures of the Sacred. Bern: Peter Lang, 2013.

Brown, Frank Burch, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Religion and the Arts. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Donoghue, Denis. Adam’s Curse: Reflections on Religion and Literature. University of Notre Dame Press, 2001.

Eliot, T.S. “Religion and Literature.” Selected Essays, 1917-1932. London: Faber & Faber, 1951. 388-401.

Felch, Susan, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Religion. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Franke, William. Poetry and Apocalypse: Theological Disclosures of Poetic Language. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008.

Hill, Geoffrey. “Poetry and ‘Menace’ and ‘Atonement.’” The Lords of Limit. Collected Critical Writings. Ed. Kenneth Haynes. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. 1-20.

—–. Style and Faith. New York: Counterpoint, 2003.

Knight, Mark, ed. The Routledge Companion to Literature and Religion. New York: Routledge, 2016.

Küng, Hans, Walter Jens. Literature and Religion: Pascal, Gryphius, Lessing, Hölderlin, Novalis, Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, Kafka. Translated, Peter Heinegg. New York: Paragon House, 1991.

Losada, José Manuel. Mitocrítica cultural. Una definición del mito. Madrid: Akal, 2022.

Myers, Benjamin P. A Poetics of Orthodoxy: Christian Truth as Aesthetic Foundation. Wipf and Stock, 2021.

Tolstoy, Leo. What is Art? [1897] Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. London: Penguin, 1997.

Weidner, Daniel, ed. Handbuch Literatur und Religion. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2016.

Ziolkowski, Eric. “Axial Age Theorising and the Comparative Study of Religion and Literature.” Literature & Theology. 28.2 (2014): 129-150.

Ziolkowski, Eric. “Religion and Literature: History and Method.” Brill Research Perspectives in Religion and the Arts. 3.1 (2019): 1-112.

——. Religion and Literature: History and Method. Leiden: Brill, 2020.

Ziolkowski, Eric Jozef, and Anthony C. Yu. Literature, Religion, and East/West Comparison. Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 2005.

Dr. Enrique Santos Marinas
Dr. Svetlana Maliavina
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• sciences of religions
• theology
• epiphanies
• theophanies
• literature
• mythology
• myth criticism