This book challenges the status quo of studies in literature and
religion by returning to "experience" as a bridge between theory and
practice. Essays focus on keywords of religious experience and
demonstrate their applications in drama, fiction, and poetry.
Each chapter explores the broad significance of its keyword as a
category of psychological and social behavior and tracks its unique
articulation by individual authors, including Conrad, Beecher Stowe and
Melville. Together, the chapters construct a critical foundation for
studying literature not only from the perspectives of theology and
historicism but from the ways that literary experience reflects,
reinforces, and sometimes challenges religious experience.