The mystery of the human heart
fiction and theology in Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.23925/2236-9937.2023v31p162-190Keywords:
Literature and thology, American literature, Calvinism, Protestant theology, Contemporary literatureAbstract
This article intents to analyze the novel Gilead (2005) by American writer Marilynne Robinson, and the possibilities of exchange between fictional and theological discourse. Published in the United States in 2004, Gilead is a long fictional diary of a rural Calvinist pastor, who, through his personal reflections and problems in his life, reflects on topics of Christian theology. In this analysis, we will take the author's own essays that explore theological themes — in The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought (1996), The Absence of Mind (2010), When I Was a Child I Read Books (2012) and The Givenness of Things (2015) — to verify the way in which Robinson articulates the theological ideas of her essay texts in her own fictional work. In her essays, the author also dialogues with important Protestant thinkers, such as John Calvin (2009) and Karl Barth (2012), whose ideas are pertinent to the development of Gilead. The main objective of this analysis is to demonstrate how a contemporary work of fiction appropriates theological language to develop problems of fictional discourse.
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