Organized by heretical movements and texts from the Gnostic Gospels to
The Book of Mormon, this book uses the work of James Joyce -
particularly Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake - as a prism to explore how
the history of Christian heresy remains part of how we read, write, and
think about books today.
Erickson argues that the study of classical, medieval, and modern
debates over heresy and orthodoxy provide new ways of understanding
modernist literature and literary theory. Using Joyce's works as a
springboard to explore different perspectives and intersections of 20th
century literature and the modern literary and religious imagination,
this book gives us new insights into how our modern and "secular"
reading practices unintentionally reflect how we understand our
religious histories.