CLSG Autumn conference 2010

Visions and Revisions:
Putting God into Writing

Corpus Christi College, Oxford
Saturday 6 November 2010

A number of devices are used by Biblical and other writers to express the divinity, including prosopopoeia, metaphor, symbol and story. Aristotle refers to metaphor as involving the transferred use of a term that properly belongs to something else, and metaphor indeed seems fundamental.

In the Bible the voice of God is everywhere, though he is and is not actually seen. Auerbach noticed 'universal-historical claims', 'multiplicity of meanings, need for interpretation', and 'preoccupation with the problematic'. 

Theophanies, the experiences of seers and mystics, and epiphanies are expressed in writing. Allegories and re-tellings of old stories refer to God even if they do not attempt to define him. Most periods of Western literary history bear this witness, and modern novels are no exception. Eliot’s Prufrock may have taken a Bergsonian view of the time he had for the decisions and revisions of whatever was on his mind.

Keynote paper:

‘The Awful Necessity of (Bible) Re-Reading’
Professor Valentine Cunningham, Corpus Christi College, Oxford

‘On “Seeing” what God is “Saying”: Remythologizing Biblical Narrative in Dialogue with Kevin Vanhoozer’s Remythologizing Theology’
Dr Richard Briggs, St John's College, Durham

‘Mimesis and Iconoclasm: the divine and the human in literature’
Dr Jonathan Roberts, University of Liverpool

'Spiritual Realism: Epiphany in the novels of William Golding'
Dr Roger Kojecký, Secretary, CLSG

'Quiet fulness: Divine Symbolism in C.S. Lewis’s Theory and Practice'
Dr Michael Ward, St Peter's College, Oxford

The programme and booking leaflet will appear on this site in September. Until then the titles above are provisional

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