The English Modernist Novel as Political Theology: Challenging the Nation

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Exploring novels by Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, Evelyn Waugh, and Sylvia Townsend Warner as political theology works that imagine a resistance to the fusion of Christianity and patriotism which fuelled and supported the First World War this book shows how we can gain valuable insights from their works for anti-militarist, anti-statist, and anti-nationalist efforts today.

While none of the four novelists in this study were committed Christians during the 1920s, Andrews explores how their fiction written in the wake of the First World War operates theologically when it challenges English civil religion the rituals of the nation that elevate the state to a form of divinity. Bringing these novels into a dialogue with recent political theologies by theorists and theologians including Giorgio Agamben, William Cavanaugh, Simon Critchley, Michel Foucault, Stanley Hauerwas and Jrgen Moltmann, this book shows the myriad ways that we can learn from the authors theopolitical imaginations.

Andrews demonstrates the many ways that these novelists issue a challenge to the problems with civil religion and the sacralized nation state and, in so doing, offer alternative visions to coordinate our inner lives with our public and collective actions.

Reviews

Charles Andrewss fascinating account of modernist fiction and the theopolitical imagination offers a distinctively new and exciting approach to the cultural and literary history of modernism. Through an introduction and four chapters dedicated to four non-religious novelists, it maps a set of complex and fascinating responses to the role of Christianity in the formation and consolidation of English nationhood. Superbly argued and impressively attuned to the nuances of literary and political discourse, the book is a vital addition to the literature on modernism and religion and the first to recognise the modernist novel as a key site of resistance to the Christian nation-state. * Suzanne Hobson, Professor of Twentieth-Century Literature, Queen Mary University of London, UK *

Author Bio

Charles Andrews is Professor of English at Whitworth University, USA.