Böcker av Wesley A. Kort

The author of this work is interested in the practice of reading text as though it were scripture. This book argues that the postmodernist attempt not to read anything at all as scripture is an illusion that the theories of reading of Maurice Blanchot and Julia Kristeva expose.

Given its affinity with questions of identity, autobiography offers a way into the interior space between author and reader, especially when writers define themselves in terms of religion. In his exploration of this "e;textual intimacy,"e; Wesley Kort begins with a theorization of what it means to say who one is and how one's self-account as a religious person stands in relation to other forms of self-identification. He then provides a critical analysis of autobiographical texts by nine contemporary American writers-including Maya Angelou, Philip Roth, and Anne Lamott-who give religion a positive place in their accounts of who they are. Finally, in disclosing his own religious identity, Kort concludes with a meditation on several meanings of the word assumption.