Leary, Mark, ed. Interpersonal Rejection. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2001.
Melancthon, Monica J. Rejected by God: The History
and Signif icance of the Rejection Motif in the Hebrew
Bible. New York: Peter Lang, 2001.
Jennifer McClinton-Temple
religion
Religion and literature are inextricably intertwined.
Many of the world’s major religious texts, such as
the Bible, the Quran, and the Bhagavad Gita, are
studied not just for their philosophical and spiri-
tual truths but for their literary aesthetics as well.
Both religion and literature spring from a common
impulse to explore and explain the fundamental
mystery of human existence—of humankind’s place
in the world and our relationship to the created uni-
verse, to the Divine, and to our fellow human beings.
Religion, like literature, mirrors the ruling cultural
paradigms of the day while also taking issue with
them, interrogating and interpreting social and cul-
tural mores and offering compelling new visions of
being in the world. They offer both comfort to the
troubled and the joys of quiet repose, and they are
intimately personal and reassuringly or troublingly
(as the case may be) public at the same time.
Not surprisingly, religion is not only a key
theme in literature but has functioned as the very
fountainhead of much literature from antiquity to
the present time. The ancient epics of the world,
from Homer’s The iLiad and The odyssey to the
Mahabharata and the Ramayana from the Indian
subcontinent, give us a revealing glimpse into the
cultural makeup of their peoples. They also feature
an elaborate parallel universe of gods and goddesses
who are intimately involved in the world of mortals
and, indeed, mirror some of the same vanities and
foibles of the human world. For example, Athena
is Odysseus’s patron deity and assists his return
home, helping him to, among other things, fight
the houseful of suitors who are pursuing his wife
Penelope and living the good life at his expense.
Similarly, Krishna, an important deity in the Hindu
pantheon of gods, helps the righteous Pandavas
defeat their cousins, the immoral Kauravas, and
regain their kingdom. In Sophocles’ oedipus the
kinG, Antigone risks Creon’s wrath and becomes a
tragic heroine by virtue of her determination to per-
form her brother Polynices’ burial rites. She acts not
just out of filial duty but also because proper burial
rites for the dead, whether they are foe or friend, are
demanded by the gods.
In more modern times, John Milton set out
to accomplish the ambitious task of writing a con-
temporary epic for England in the 17th century by
choosing to write a Christian depiction “of man’s
disobedience of God” and the expulsion of Adam
and Eve from Paradise. The Bible is the inspira-
tion for his great epic, paradise Lost, and biblical
themes of good, evil, the nature of sin, and the power
of redemption with true repentance that is available
through religion stem from the core of this text.
Similarly, Christopher Marlowe’s play doc-
tor Faustus, based on the Faust legend, explores
the pitfalls of the arrogance of knowledge as Faustus
signs away his soul to the devil in exchange for the
fleeting pleasures of necromancy and magic for
a brief 24 years. The play is notable in the way it
explores Faustus’s battle with his conscience (imag-
ined as his good and bad angels), and then sketches
in moving detail the plight he faces with the pros-
pect of eternal damnation. But more profound is its
depiction of Mephistopheles, one of Satan’s chief
emissaries, sent to interact with Faustus. The very
origins of British drama can be located in religion
in the shape of the medieval miracles and morality
plays that featured stories from the Bible and were
concerned with moral education. In fact, scholars
have traced the origins of fool characters common
in Shakespeare back to the portrayal of Satan as
a bawdy and buffoonish character in the Morality
plays.
In the West, religion has been the inspiration for
much of its most acclaimed art and architecture, as
well as its literature. The work of Raphael, Michel-
angelo, and Leonardo Da Vinci, to name a few of
the most acclaimed painters of Renaissance Europe,
as well as the most exquisite churches and cathedrals
in Europe, owe their origin to the religious impulse.
In addition, the church has always been a major
patron of the arts, commissioning some of the most
profoundly important works, whether they be paint-
ing, religious manuscripts/treatises, or the buildings
of western civilization. In the Dark Ages in medievalreligion 91