Marilynne Robinson, Theologian of the Ordinary

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Marilynne Robinson, Theologian of the Ordinary posits that Robinsons widely celebrated novels and essays are best understood as emerging from a foundational theology that has 'the Ordinary' as its source. Reading Robinsons published work, and drawing on an original interview with Robinson, Andrew Cunning constructs an authentically Robinsonian theology that is at once distinctly American and conversant with contemporary continental philosophy of religion. This book demonstrates that the Ordinary is the source of Robinsons writing and, as a phenomenon that opens onto a surplus of meaning, is where Robinsons notion of transcendence emerges. Robinsons theology is one centered on the material reality of the world and on the subjective nature of ones encounter with oneself and the physical stuff of existence. Arguing that the Ordinary demands an artistic response, this book reads Robinsons fiction as her theological response to the surplus of meaning in ordinary experience. Under the themes of grace, language, time and self, Cunning locates the ordinary, everyday grounding of Robinsons metaphysics.

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Marilynne Robinson, Theologian of the Ordinary demonstrates the theological richness of Robinsons fiction and highlights its theological potential. Cunning charts new directions in Robinson studies for the imaginative to enliven the theological, to their mutual enrichment. * Religious Studies and Theology *
Cunnings wonderfully attentive and illuminating readings of Robinsons novels represent a key contribution to our understanding of her work as a theology of the exceptional ordinary. * David Coughlan, Lecturer in English, University of Limerick, Ireland, and author of Ghost Writing in Contemporary American Fiction (2016) *
Marilynne Robinson is a rare writer, one who combines an astringent and dazzling intellectual precision with deep compassion and a hard won belief in hope. In Andrew Cunning's book she receives the kind of critical reading that her work deserves: alert, attentive and attuned to the ways in which her theology of the everyday, and especially the drama of grace, is at play in everything that she writes. This is a fine study that does justice to its subject and makes an excellent contribution to the fields of American literature and religious studies. * Andrew Tate, Reader in Literature, Religion and Aesthetics, Lancaster University, UK, and author of Apocalyptic Fiction (Bloomsbury, 2017) *
Like the lake which features so significantly in Marilynne Robinsons first novel, her fiction combines a level, luminous surface with a depth of disturbed and elusive memory. Andrew Cunning helps us see a bit further into that depth, into the bewildering strangeness of the ordinary mapping out Robinsons continuities with 19th-century American literary and philosophical themes, illuminating what she thinks about language, narrative, selfhood and myth, and pursuing her subtle and many-sided engagement with the Calvinist tradition. It is a careful, intelligent, original book, a really significant contribution to the understanding of this remarkable thinker and storyteller. * Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury *

Author Bio

Andrew Cunning is a theologian and writer in Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK. He has taught at Queens University Belfast and the University of Limerick.