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Divine Narratives: Exploring the Intersection of Poetry, Myth, and the...
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Divine Narratives: Exploring the Intersection of Poetry, Myth, and the Spiritual in Literature and Theatre

A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444). This special issue belongs to the section "Religions and Humanities/Philosophies".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2025) | Viewed by 4458

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Jamal Assadi

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of English, Sakhnin College, Sakhnin 3081000, Israel
Interests: literature studies; literary criticism; modern literature; comparative literature; fiction; critical theory; poetry; creative writing

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue seeks to explore the intricate relationship between divine narratives and their artistic expression in poetry, myth, literature, and theatre. Across cultures and historical epochs, literature and theatre have served as profound mediums for engaging with spiritual dimensions, mythological frameworks, and transcendent experiences. These works often address divine themes through direct invocation of deities, allegorical representations, or the existential struggles of human beings seeking meaning and connection.

We invite contributions that delve into the ways poetry, drama, and narrative texts negotiate the sacred and the profane, offering profound insights into spiritual aspirations, divine encounters, and mythic archetypes. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • The adaptation of ancient myths in modern literature;
  • The role of ritual and performance in theatrical productions;
  • Poetic explorations of spiritual transcendence, divine encounters, or inner conflict;
  • The intersection of mythological frameworks with contemporary narratives.

We particularly welcome interdisciplinary approaches that bridge religious studies, literary criticism, and performance theory. These perspectives will enrich our understanding of how divine narratives shape and reflect cultural and artistic practices.

By gathering diverse perspectives, this Special Issue aims to deepen the discourse on how literature and theatre remain vital spaces for negotiating spiritual and mythological questions. The project aspires to foster a high-quality peer-review process and produce a collection that expands critical perspectives on the interplay between divine narratives and artistic expression in both historical and contemporary contexts.

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 this to the Guest Editor, or to the Assistant Editor of Religions. Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Jamal Assadi
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 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.

Keywords

  • divine narratives
  • poetry and myth
  • spirituality in literature
  • the sacred and the profane
  • ritual and performance

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Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

18 pages, 1413 KB  
Article
Ibn Battuta’s Journey–Analytical Study: Eliciting Values and Curious Customs from Ibn Battuta’s Journey: “Tuhfat An-Nuzzar fi Ghara’ibal-Amsar wa-‘Aja’ib Al-Asfar”
by Gamal Adawi
Religions 2025, 16(12), 1520; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16121520 - 2 Dec 2025
Viewed by 335
Abstract
The research aims to derive the positive and negative values and strange habits included in Ibn Battuta’s journey called “Tuhfat An-Nuzzar fi Ghara’ibal-Amsar wa-‘Aja’ib Al-Asfar” by Shams al-Din bin Abdullah al-Lawati, the Moroccan al-Tanji, known as Ibn Battuta (d. 1377 [...] Read more.
The research aims to derive the positive and negative values and strange habits included in Ibn Battuta’s journey called “Tuhfat An-Nuzzar fi Ghara’ibal-Amsar wa-‘Aja’ib Al-Asfar” by Shams al-Din bin Abdullah al-Lawati, the Moroccan al-Tanji, known as Ibn Battuta (d. 1377 AD), presented and investigated by Ali al-Muntasir al-Katani (D.T), which was included in Ibn Battuta’s trip, to the peoples of the countries he visited on the African and Asian continents. A total of 440 respondents participated in the study: 195 teachers in the supplementary track and 245 fourth-year regular track students at an Arab College of Education from all disciplines: early childhood, Arabic language, science, mathematics and computer science, English language, and special education. The respondents were asked to select an enrichment text or a story of one or more pages from Ibn Battuta’s travels, with the aim of eliciting the positive and negative values and strange customs of the peoples and countries Ibn Battuta visited in Africa and Asia. The study results indicated that Ibn Battuta’s travelogue, “Tuhfat An-Nuzzar fi Ghara’ibal-Amsar wa-‘Aja’ib Al-Asfar,” is considered an important literary reference, rich with texts and stories from which we can deduce the values and customs of the people of the countries Ibn Battuta visited in Africa and Asia. Teachers can use this information for discussion and constructive dialogue with their students in schools, in various educational subjects such as social studies, religion, literature, Arabic language, history, and geography. Most of the study participants support the idea of integrating Ibn Battuta’s travelogue into various lessons. The study recommends the importance of integrating and expanding it to include other subjects in schools, colleges, and universities. This integration should be systematically built around various activities that achieve “meaningful learning,” ensure active student participation, and enhance value for the learner and society. In conclusion, I recommend conducting detailed studies and research on the educational values derived from travel literature. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Divine Narratives: Exploring the Intersection of Poetry, Myth, and the Spiritual in Literature and Theatre)
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26 pages, 656 KB  
Article
“Mending the Sky” or “Forging a New Sun”?—Myth Rewriting and the May Fourth Predicament of “Disenchantment” in “Rebirth of the Goddesses”
by Shun Yao and Qinghong Yin
Religions 2025, 16(12), 1514; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16121514 - 29 Nov 2025
Viewed by 352
Abstract
Guo Moruo’s “Rebirth of the Goddesses” is among the landmark works of modern Chinese poetry. Its myth-rewriting amounts to an act of “disenchantment” carried out amid the ruins of “enchantment”. Yet this heroic undertaking is caught in a triple dialectical vortex: in order [...] Read more.
Guo Moruo’s “Rebirth of the Goddesses” is among the landmark works of modern Chinese poetry. Its myth-rewriting amounts to an act of “disenchantment” carried out amid the ruins of “enchantment”. Yet this heroic undertaking is caught in a triple dialectical vortex: in order to disenchant, it must appeal to the primordial “energies” of myth (nature, life, imagination); in order for disenchantment to be effective, it strategically “uses enchantment” (by requisitioning textual canons and ritual authority); and in the end—because of the intensity of rewriting and the depth of political and spiritual investment—it becomes itself a new layer of enchantment (a cycle of re-enchantment). This exposes the core dilemma of China’s modernity project: to build a new order on the ruins of tradition is necessarily a tragic enterprise of rupture and continuity, of disenchantment and re-enchantment at once. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Divine Narratives: Exploring the Intersection of Poetry, Myth, and the Spiritual in Literature and Theatre)
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18 pages, 375 KB  
Article
Invoking the Sacred in a Secular Age: Modernist Appeals to the Divine in T. S. Eliot and İsmet Özel
by Fırat Ender Koçyiğit, Ş. Füsun Özkaya and M. Emir İlhan
Religions 2025, 16(11), 1402; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16111402 - 4 Nov 2025
Viewed by 549
Abstract
This article offers a comparative study of T. S. Eliot’s Ash-Wednesday and İsmet Özel’s “Amentü” to examine how modernist poetry refunctions ritual language as an aesthetic and spiritual response to different modernities. Drawing on world-systems theory and the sociology of secularization, the study [...] Read more.
This article offers a comparative study of T. S. Eliot’s Ash-Wednesday and İsmet Özel’s “Amentü” to examine how modernist poetry refunctions ritual language as an aesthetic and spiritual response to different modernities. Drawing on world-systems theory and the sociology of secularization, the study argues that Eliot and Özel exemplify two structurally distinct but related modern experiences: Eliot writes from within the West’s internal fragmentation, while Özel speaks from the periphery of an imposed, Westernizing modernity. These divergent contexts produce contrasting religious modernisms—Eliot’s introspective Anglo-Catholic poetics of inward renewal versus Özel’s populist Islamic poetics of collective dissent. Both poets employ modernist form—fragment, refrain, montage—to reassert the sacred within secular conditions, yet with opposing cultural motivations. The comparison demonstrates that religious modernism is a transnational phenomenon, not a Western anomaly, and that literary modernism itself adapts to the asymmetries of global modernity. The article concludes by proposing “religious modernist poetics” as a comparative framework for studying faith and form across literary traditions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Divine Narratives: Exploring the Intersection of Poetry, Myth, and the Spiritual in Literature and Theatre)
15 pages, 350 KB  
Article
Tibet as Method: Reimagining Marginalized Narratives and Religious Representations in Ma Yuan’s Fiction
by Yi He
Religions 2025, 16(9), 1166; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16091166 - 10 Sep 2025
Viewed by 856
Abstract
Tibet occupies a central place in the avant-garde narratives of Ma Yuan (b. 1953), whose works significantly advanced the thought liberation movements of the 1980s in the People’s Republic of China. As global interest in the intersection of religion, literature, and cultural identity [...] Read more.
Tibet occupies a central place in the avant-garde narratives of Ma Yuan (b. 1953), whose works significantly advanced the thought liberation movements of the 1980s in the People’s Republic of China. As global interest in the intersection of religion, literature, and cultural identity grows, Ma Yuan’s experimental writings offer a unique lens into the reconfiguration of religious and marginalized narratives in modern Chinese literature. While previous research has focused on his formal and stylistic innovations, this study uncovers how Ma Yuan transforms Buddhist rituals, myths, and customs within Tibetan culture to reexamine the spiritual dimensions of trauma and identity among marginalized groups. By engaging with Tibet as both a cultural reality and a mythological allegory, his narratives explore the interplay between body and soul, sacred and secular, and center and periphery within the late twentieth-century Chinese artistic landscape. This interdisciplinary study highlights how modernist literature reinterprets sacred practices and bridges Tibetan cultural heritage with China’s socio-historical modernization, contributing to broader understandings of cultural and intellectual transformations in the study of religion. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Divine Narratives: Exploring the Intersection of Poetry, Myth, and the Spiritual in Literature and Theatre)
16 pages, 409 KB  
Article
The Intertwining and Its Pretext Between the Stories of Solomon’s Copper Carafes and The City of Brass in Ancient Arabic Literature
by Saleh Abboud
Religions 2025, 16(3), 333; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16030333 - 6 Mar 2025
Viewed by 1358
Abstract
This article examines the intertextuality and shared origins of two prominent narratives in classical Arabic literature: the story of Solomon’s Copper Carafes and the tale of The City of Brass. Both narratives, which later appeared in combined form in Alf Laylah wa-Laylah [...] Read more.
This article examines the intertextuality and shared origins of two prominent narratives in classical Arabic literature: the story of Solomon’s Copper Carafes and the tale of The City of Brass. Both narratives, which later appeared in combined form in Alf Laylah wa-Laylah (One Thousand and One Nights), are laden with religious and mythological motifs that reflect broader cultural and theological concerns in the medieval Islamic world. This study attempts to answer the following question: “What are the common motives and ideas between the stories of Solomon’s Copper Carafes and The City of Brass in ancient Arabic literature?” By analyzing these stories as they appear in key sources of classical Arabic prose, this study investigates their shared themes and explores their potential common origins predating their Arabic textual forms. This study analyzes selected classical Arabic sources to demonstrate the narrative relationship between The City of Brass and Solomon’s Copper Carafes. It argues that both stories share a common origin predating their Arabic textual transmission. From a literary perspective, the tales of The City of Brass and Solomon’s Copper Carafes are prime examples of Islamic religious fiction, skillfully employing narrative devices to spread Islamic principles and beliefs. The stories are consistent with the core beliefs of Islam since they emphasize austerity, the certainty of death, and the primacy of monotheism. From a religious perspective, the intertwined stories of The City of Copper and Solomon’s Copper Carafes in Alf Laylah wa-Laylah provide a powerful example of how Islamic stories are inherently consistent with Islamic morality and beliefs. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Divine Narratives: Exploring the Intersection of Poetry, Myth, and the Spiritual in Literature and Theatre)
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