Literature and Religious Experience

Literature and Religious Experience challenges the status quo of studies in literature and religion by returning to "experience" as a bridge between theory and practice. Essays present keywords of religious experience and demonstrate the significance of such concepts in readings of literature across historical periods and genres, from writers as diverse as Shakespeare, Conrad, Beecher Stowe and Melville.

Each essay clearly conveys the distinct deliverances of a focus on experience instead of theology or historicism, and each also defines the parameters of its keyword so as to showcase its relevance to literary contexts outside of the author's example.