Reflexion on Relationship: Literature and Religion in the Literary Critics of Geoffrey Hartman Cover Image

Refleksja nad relacją: literatura a religia w krytyce literackiej Geoffreya Hartmana
Reflexion on Relationship: Literature and Religion in the Literary Critics of Geoffrey Hartman

Author(s): Tomasz Garbol
Subject(s): Philosophy, Language and Literature Studies, Special Branches of Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, Theory of Literature
Published by: Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL & Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II
Keywords: literature and religion; romanticism; Geoffrey Hartman

Summary/Abstract: This article concerns a transition of the cultural image of religious experience. This transition — shaped by Anglo-Saxon romanticism — was identified by the American literary critic Geoffrey Hartman in literature. The most important aspects of this transition are: the victory of a creative model of poetry over a mimetic model, the epitaphic sensibility to the transitoriness of the world, the naturalization of supernaturalism (according to M.H. Abrams’s formula: natural supernaturalism) and the relinquishment of answers to ultimate questions. The horizon of searching for a sense of this transition is marked by quasi-messianism in view of Adorno — i.e. a belief that you should prize the variety of incomplete answers more than the integrality of ultimate truths.

  • Issue Year: 66/2018
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 51-65
  • Page Count: 15
  • Language: Polish