A Poetics of Jesus: The Search for Christ Through Writing in the Nineteenth Century

This title was first published in 2002: A Poetics of Jesus explores the act of writing within and between the boundaries of 18th and 19th century biblical criticism and fiction. Reflecting on the work of Christian poetics after Augustine to F. C. Baur, Ludwig Feuerbach, D. F. Strauss and Victorian novelists and writers of the 18th and 19th century, this book breaks new ground in juxtaposing the evoked image of Christ arising from Victorian biblical criticism against the image of Christ within fiction. Demonstrating how literature can inform theology without itself becoming 'theology', A Poetics of Jesus constitutes an important contribution to the literature/theology debate and a much needed contribution to contemporary Christology through its introduction to the literature and the writers central to the beginnings of the historical quest for Jesus.