Poetics of Critique: The Interdisciplinarity of Textuality

by Andrew W. Hass

Poetics of Critique breaks new ground in its pursuit of a formal and critical language of interdisciplinarity. The 'founding' disciplines within the humanities - theology, philosophy, and literature - are brought together here in a shared space, but one that reconstitutes the very nature of each and any discipline. In this space, critique and imagination consciously merge, giving way to a new kind of thinking, a new kind of consciousness, a new kind of textuality. Readings alternate between discursive analysis and imaginative revisioning; texts alternate between those of the critical thinker (Kant, Nietzsche, Gadamer) and those of the novelist, the poet, and the playwright (Bulgakov, Goethe, Kundera, Sophocles). In this movement between traditions, a fusion, at once organic and dynamic, takes theologian, philosopher and artist become one, and a pure interdisciplinarity begins to emerge into view. Andrew Hass draws us into a new critical-poetic sensibility, by which we may explore the ultimate questions of human existence and divine reality with new vigor, and sustain, or indeed revitalize, our deep passion for the fundamental question of truth.

196 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2003