Is "religion" really distinct from "culture" or "politics?" Aren't these
rather anachronistic categories of dubious analytical value, particularly
since their consruction can be historicized--and politicized?

Is it really common for "any study of religious culture ... to be prefaced
by some form of authorial confession of faith?" I can only think of a few
New Historicists who have done that, though their "confessions" are not made
on behalf of anything very clear-cut--maybe even something on the order of a
quasi-religious absence of faith. Some actual historians ;-) are notable
exceptions, and then there are the occupationally outed folks with SJ or
something else following their names. 

I think it's more interesting when we are kept guessing, but if there is a
traditional bias it is certainly not that one has to be religious to
understand religion or Lutheran/Protestant to understand Luther. I recall
reading an early 20thC manual for grad students some time ago that had a
section on "bias," and Sr. Mary Mandeleva OSM (or some other order) was
cited as being suspect. No doubt she was, but having "pegged" such a
scholar, perhaps the resulting lack of interest and usefulness comes from
the reader and his presumption to have reduced (or just as easily,
valorized) the author's ideas to his own experientially and socialized
prejudices about the limited/limiting (or expansively brilliant)
intellectual orbit of a Catholic nun. E.g., I suspect that a lot of people
read Eamon Duffy (who has of course helped them "peg" him) and come up with
some bristly reactions that would be far less bristly had his name been
Heiko Obermann. Conversely, had Duffey written approximately what Obermann
wrote about Luther and the Reformation, reactions would probably have been
more bristly. Maybe.

There is no way out of the problem, if it is one. To protest that
"secularity" itself is the gold standard as some kind of
objectivity/neutrailty seems to be a position utterly abolished in the
post-positivist, postmodern era and in light of contemporary examinations of
early modern/modern history, secularity and "secularization" that are
surprisingly uninfluential (though that is perhaps changing) in English
departments. 

Anyway, I'm all for the new syncretism if it is an apt designation for a D.
W. Robertson, David Aers, or James Simpson. -Dan Knauss


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Hannibal Hamlin [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Monday, April 25, 2005 9:35 AM
> Subject: Re: Momentum? Trajectory?
> 
> 
> Much depends, of course, on what the "religious turn" constitutes.  I 
> spend much of my time studying things religious (or biblical), not for 
> any confessional reasons (it strikes me as sad that any study of 
> religious culture has to be prefaced by some form of authorial 
> confession of faith -- no one studying Ovidian influences feels 
> compelled to clarify their own paganism), but because it seems to me 
> that (a) religion impinged on virtually everything in the period, and
> (b) it's in the realm of the religious (broadly consider) 
> that one often finds people at their most serious and 
> engaged.  I found Diarmuid McCullough's remarks at RSA 
> encouraging and important -- he argued for a more 
> confessionally detached, indeed secular, approach to 
> Reformation studies.  My hopes would be the same for studies 
> of religion and (or in) literature.  It would be refreshing 
> if we could finally get beyond the old Protestant-Catholic 
> polemic (which doesn't mean, of course, rejecting either 
> Catholicism or Protestantism, not to mention Judaism or Islam).
> 
> On the matter of "new" approaches more generally, my feeling tends to 
> be that the more neatly I can peg a critic as "X" or "Y," the less 
> interesting and useful I generally find her or his work.  I'd advocate 
> a New Syncretism (though maybe we should drop the "New"s altogether!).
> 
> On New Historicism, isn't it the case that some of the general 
> principles
> -- the importance of situating literary works in their
> historical-cultural contexts, say -- have become part of the 
> critical mainstream, absorbed into the general discourse, but 
> that we have (I would say happily) moved beyond the narrowly 
> Foucauldian, oppression-and-subversion model of culture?
> 
> Hannibal
> 
> 
> 
> At 05:29 PM 4/24/05 -0500, you wrote:
> >Oddly Jackson and Marotti focus on the ethical aspects of the 
> >"religious turn" to the exclusion of the political. Terry
> Eagleton has
> >gone back to his Catholic roots to salvage Marxist theory with 
> >Aristotle and Aquinas. Alain Badiou has gone to St. Paul for a new 
> >militant figure. Likewise, Slavoj Zizek wants a "materialist 
> >fundamentalism" and goes to Lenin, Lacan, St. Paul and G. K. 
> >Chesterton. Stanley Fish, who predicted the "religious turn"
> as well,
> >keeps gleefully dancing on the enlightenment corpse of liberal 
> >pluralism, and Jurgen Habermas is making common cause with
> Benedict XVI
> >to save it. Fascinating time. -Dan Knauss
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Michael Seanger [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> > > Sent: Saturday, April 23, 2005 1:03 PM
> > > Subject: Re: Momentum? Trajectory?
> > >
> > >
> > > I got that article and read it -- it's very interesting.
> Of course,
> > > I couldn't help notice that Jackson and Marotti's touted "Turn to 
> > > Religion" sounds remarkably appropriate to our own post-9/11 
> > > zeitgeist, with "The Passion of the Christ", God on the cover of 
> > > Newsweek with some frequency, etc.  Of course, I think
> Marotti and
> > > Jackson have a point -- my own criticism addresses pious
> literature,
> > > because I think it's very interesting.  But another thing that 
> > > strikes me is that J and M's notion of where we are going seems 
> > > remarkably different to Harry's.  And neither stance
> attaches itself
> > > to a marketable banner headline -- it seems as if we refer to what
> > > we do as New Historicism, almost by default (apres
> la lettre?).
> > >
> > > Michael
> > >
> > > Bryan John Lowrance wrote:
> > >
> > > >Dear Michael,
> > > >
> > > >An interesting article for this is Ken Jackson and Arthur F.
> > > Marotti,
> > > >"The Turn to Religion in Early Modern Studies," Criticism,
> > > vol, 46, n.
> > > >1. (Winter 2004) pp. 167-90.  It provides good bibliography and 
> > > >overview of a lot of recent scholarship as well as
> providing some
> > > >interesting theoretical analysis.  If your school subscribes
> > > to Project
> > > >Muse, it's available on that.
> > > >
> > > >Best,
> > > >
> > > >Bryan Lowrance.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >>Dear All,
> > > >>
> > > >>I'm just finishing up a project with a student on her
> way to grad
> > > >>school, and the idea is to get her oriented on graduate study 
> > > >>(literary studies generally, and English Renaissance in
> > > particular).
> > > >>She asked an interesting question yesterday, which was,
> > > where are we
> > > >>currently?  When I was at her stage in 1992, we all had a
> > > pretty clear
> > > >>idea of where the momentum was in literary scholarship, even 
> > > >>though there were clearly differing schools and opinions -- all
> > > scholarship
> > > >>seemed to be positioned in one way or another with regard
> > > to the New
> > > >>Historicism.  So I thought I'd turn the question out to the
> > > group: Is
> > > >>there a collective sense that we are operating in a
> > > particular phase
> > > >>of criticism -- either as Spenserians, Sidneyans, or more 
> > > >>generally?
> > > >>
> > > >>All the best,
> > > >>
> > > >>Michael

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