The Interpretation Of Otherness: Literature, Religion, And The American Imagination

The Interpretation of Otherness This page intentionally left blank The Interpretation of Otherness Literature, Religion, and the American Imagination GILES GUNN New York Oxford University Press 1979 Copyright © 1979 Oxford University Press, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Gunn, Giles B. The interpretation of otherness. Includes bibliographical references and index. i. American literature—History and criticism. 2. Religion and literature. 3. Religion in literature. I. Title. PS166.G8 81o'.9'31 78-17870 ISBN 0-19-502453-2 Printed in the United States of America To Marilyn and Robert Caroline and Charles This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments During the course of writing I have received encouragement and support from a variety of friends and colleagues. To cite only the most obvious, I wish to thank Anthony C. Yu, Charles H. Long, Schubert M. Ogden, Roland A. Delattre, William A. Clebsch, Nathan A. Scott, Jr., Leo Marx, Tom F. Driver, Martin E. Marty, Robert Detweiler, Ruel W. Tyson, David Hesla, Stephen A. Marini, John H. Schutz, Preston M. Browning, Wesley Kort, Stanley Romaine Hopper, Amos Wilder, David L. Miller, James B. Wiggins, A. K. and Mali Ramanujan, John Seelye, J. Hillis Miller, Jaygook Kim, Stanley Lusby, Thomas Helm, Errol McGuire, Frank Scafella, Michael Kinnamon, James Sellers, Laura Bird Bramlett, and, most especially, my wife, Janet Varner Gunn. While none of these individuals bears any responsibility for what I have written and many would take vigorous exception to certain of my positions, they have all contributed something to my ideas, and several suggested substantial improvements in my arguments. Without the cheerful cooperation and stylistic good sense of Ms. Victoria Bijur of Oxford University Press, the following pages would have been far less readable and the whole book delayed considerably in production. And without the enthusiastic support and vii Vlll ACKNOWLEDGMENTS discerning editorial advice of Mr. E. Allen Kelley, vice president at Oxford, and Mr. Charles W. Scott, Oxford's religious books editor, the manuscript might never have been published, at least in its present form. Their generous encouragement and constructive suggestions not only contributed to the formation and expression of certain ideas but also helped me discover what I was really driving at. Lastly, 1 wish to thank Charles Carmony for able assistance in the compilation of an Index. To the four persons to whom this book is dedicated, I owe a different debt of gratitude. Their contribution has been one of faith rather than understanding. Even when they have had difficulty grasping the meaning of my work, they have continued to believe in its importance because of their belief in me. And without that belief, as only Marilyn fully knows, since she was most responsible, the work itself would never have been undertaken. Various early drafts of some of the material included in this volume were delivered as lectures at several institutions where I invariably met with responses that added stimulus and refinement to my thinking and that occasionally compelled me to start writing all over again, among them Syracuse University, Reed College, Duke University, Oregon State University, St. Mary's College, Notre Dame, the University of Southern California, Florida State University, Eckerd College, Yale Divinity School, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and Bowdoin College. Fully half of this book was written on a leave made possible through the generosity of the John Simo