About This Issue

Authors

  • Herausgeber / Editors

Abstract

The six articles featured in the current issue of DIEGESIS deal with the manifold relations between faith and narration. Emilie Garrigou-Kempton discusses the reception of the apparition of the Virgin Mary in Lourdes in the late 19th century. Her readings show how Catholic narratives and medical narratives negotiate the truthfulness of this event. Andreas Mauz explores a specific subgenre of the autobiography, namely narratives of dying and of death. Through research drawing on the diverse representations of Golgotha, he demonstrates how the end of life is narratively staged in the literature on Jesus. Megan Milota investigates how in religious book clubs in the U.S. beliefs of individual members colour their discussions of a novel by Louise Erdrich, and thus shows how text and faith interact during group readings. In doing so, she highlights, among other things, the significance of the concept of “narrative interest,” which correlates the world of the novel with that of its readers. The interest in both re-narrating and recounting also shapes Howard Sklar’s contribution to this issue. His narratologically informed comparison of two accounts of the biblical story about Joseph in Egypt demonstrates how both retellings (namely, Book of Yashar and The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs) reveal idiosyncratic interpretations of the original plot. The Bible also lies at the center of Ilse Müllner’s contribution, which examines different forms and functions of God in narratives from the Old Testament. In analyzing selected passages, the author studies narrative representations of God, especially in respect of those characteristics particular to narratives of prophesy. Finally, Felix Prautzsch examines the truth claims and referential qualities of medieval legends of the saints from the Legenda aurea corpus, narratives that had never been questioned by contemporaries and were only challenged after the Reformation.

In addition to these contributions, the issue offers five reviews of the latest publications in the field of narrative research. We are, moreover, particularly pleased to present you an interview that Frederick Luis Aldama conducted with Jonathan Culler, as well as a guest feature by Gerald Prince, whose Dictionary of Narratology, first published in 1983, was the first reference work for narrative theory. His entries to an as yet incomplete “humorish” dictionary of narratology round off this issue of DIEGESIS. We hope you will enjoy the read.

Published

12/12/2018