The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Religion

Acts of reading take many forms, not least of all written and oral, and they are particularly interesting and complex where religion and literature cross over. Immediately, we are confronted with definitions of “religion” and “literature”, as well as making sense of where religious texts (scriptural, liturgical and so forth) are themselves “literary” (in the sense that they can be seen as narratives or poetry or recital material). Then many ways exist in which literature (such as novels and poetry) draw on religious imagery and language: in the West we think of Milton and Herrick, for example. Even these definitions...