Sober Cannibals, Drunken Christians: Melville, Kierkegaard, and Tragic Optimism in Polarized Works (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780881462005)

Despite that they didn't know each other, the writing styles of American writer Herman Melville and Danish writer Sren Kierkegaard complement each other, especially their humor, irony, penchants for paradox, and passions for imagery and poetics. In addition, their works similarly address issues of the world and time. Esthetic, ethical, social, philosophical, and theological paths on which they walk reveal similar footprints.

Melville's and Kierkegaard's rebounding echoes reverberate in our highly charged and polarized times, speaking especially to the timeless conundrum of what Kierkegaard calls the "disastrous confounding of politics and religion" and what Melville calls "drunken" Christianitynamely, the intoxicated mixing of worldly issues with otherworldly issues without care paid to maintaining necessary ethical distinctions.

Author: Jamie Lorentzen
ISBN-10: 0881462004
ISBN-13: 9780881462005
Publisher: Mercer University Press
Language: English
Published: 10/30/2010
Pages: 347
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.15lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 1.10d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 05/01/2011