Imagining Ultimacy: Religious and Spiritual Experience in Literature

Dear Colleagues,

Persons who undergo religious and spiritual experiences often describe them as full, profound, meaningful, and enlightening. Involving intensified feelings of vitality, such “ultimate” experiences describe neurocognitive states of heightened attention and pleasure, feelings of transcendence and purpose, and aspirations toward wholeness and flourishing. Additionally, for many, religious and spiritual experiences serve as both a sign of and vehicle for what is sacred; they are a medium through which we commune with the divine.

Literature gives powerful expression to such experiences. And yet, relatively few serious discussions of religious and spiritual experience exist within literary studies. When such discussions occur, they tend to confine themselves to representations rather than to presentations of religious and spiritual life; that is, scholarly discussions often distance us from religious and spiritual experience by mediating it through the kind of deliberative, critical rhetoric that dispels the energies it analyzes. This runs contrary to scholarly practices in the field of spirituality studies. There, rather than hermetically sealing off spirituality through an approach of disinterested objectivity, scholars draw upon their own religious and spiritual lives as tools of understanding. The result is a deeper engagement of religious and spiritual experiences and a more nuanced appreciation of the porous boundaries separating traditions.

How might such openness to religious and spiritual experiences increase our understanding of literature and help us engage it more creatively? And how might literature help us discern the diversity and implications of intense, ultimate experiences? How might literature, in Rita Felski’s words, bring to our attention “things as we know them to be, yet reordered and redescribed, shimmering in a transformed light”? How might it, citing Felski again, bear the form of religious revelation, inducing in us “moments of wonder, reverence, exaltation, hope, epiphany, or joy”?

This Special Issue of Religions attends to the expansive range of religious and spiritual experiences either represented within or generated—presented—by literature. Research areas may include (but not be limited to) the following:

• Religious and/or spiritual experience in literature;
• Religious and/or spiritual experience as an effect of literature;
• Religious and/or spiritual experience as a way to engage literary texts;
• Religious and/or spiritual experience in or across theoretical approaches or schools of criticism.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200–300 words summarizing the essay they would like to submit. Please send these proposals to the Guest Editor, Matthew Wickman ([email protected]), or to the Assistant Editor of Religions, Ms. Violet Li ([email protected]). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editor for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

Prof. Dr. Matthew Wickman
Guest Editor

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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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.

• religious experience
• spiritual experience
• spirituality
• religion and literature
• literary criticism
• literary theory