When COVID-19 lockdown restrictions were eased in the UK in June 2020, one of the first measures ... more When COVID-19 lockdown restrictions were eased in the UK in June 2020, one of the first measures to be introduced was to allow places of worship to open for private individual prayer. This poem reflects on the experience of visiting a church building for the first time following this re-opening, albeit with social distancing and other safety measures in place.
This paper uses tools from feminist literary theory to analyse three twenty-first century novels:... more This paper uses tools from feminist literary theory to analyse three twenty-first century novels: Esther: Royal Beauty by Angela Hunt (2015); Esther: A Novel by Rebecca Kanner (2015) and The Gilded Chamber by Rebecca Kohn (2004). The novels are all creative retellings of the Book of Esther, and the paper situates them in the context of a textual reception history which has been characterised by rich and varied ‘aggadic interpretation and a tendency to creatively rewrite, rather than translate, the problematically subversive canonical version. Working from the premise posited by structuralist Gérard Genette, that whenever a text is creatively retold, it is “transvalued” (the derivative text replaces aspects of the target text with the values of its own context), it considers which cultural values are being imputed into twenty-first century retellings of the story. Using Meir Sternberg’s narratological criticism as a framework, which posits that the ways in which readers fill in the “...
There are two instances in the entire Hebrew Bible in which women feature as the to write. “One i... more There are two instances in the entire Hebrew Bible in which women feature as the to write. “One is Esther (Esther 9:29) and the other is:” כתב subject of the verb Jezebel (1 Kgs 21:8). This paper takes this fact as a starting point from which to illuminate the narrative and thematic junctures of writing, power and gender in Esther and its literary afterlife. It utilizes the hermeneutical framework of feminist literary theory, as well as drawing upon narratology and linguistic theory related to gender and power, and textual theory related to metatextuality and intertextuality, in order to explore the ways in which the narrator, the canonization process and the reception history of the text have functioned to constrain and restrain Esther’s authorial identity and status, and conversely the places and spaces where it has been developed and emphasised. Key areas of exploration include the writing culture of the Late Persian and Early Hellenistic periods, creative rewritings of Esther in...
When COVID-19 lockdown restrictions were eased in the UK in June 2020, one of the first measures ... more When COVID-19 lockdown restrictions were eased in the UK in June 2020, one of the first measures to be introduced was to allow places of worship to open for private individual prayer. This poem reflects on the experience of visiting a church building for the first time following this re-opening, albeit with social distancing and other safety measures in place.
This paper uses tools from feminist literary theory to analyse three twenty-first century novels:... more This paper uses tools from feminist literary theory to analyse three twenty-first century novels: Esther: Royal Beauty by Angela Hunt (2015); Esther: A Novel by Rebecca Kanner (2015) and The Gilded Chamber by Rebecca Kohn (2004). The novels are all creative retellings of the Book of Esther, and the paper situates them in the context of a textual reception history which has been characterised by rich and varied ‘aggadic interpretation and a tendency to creatively rewrite, rather than translate, the problematically subversive canonical version. Working from the premise posited by structuralist Gérard Genette, that whenever a text is creatively retold, it is “transvalued” (the derivative text replaces aspects of the target text with the values of its own context), it considers which cultural values are being imputed into twenty-first century retellings of the story. Using Meir Sternberg’s narratological criticism as a framework, which posits that the ways in which readers fill in the “...
There are two instances in the entire Hebrew Bible in which women feature as the to write. “One i... more There are two instances in the entire Hebrew Bible in which women feature as the to write. “One is Esther (Esther 9:29) and the other is:” כתב subject of the verb Jezebel (1 Kgs 21:8). This paper takes this fact as a starting point from which to illuminate the narrative and thematic junctures of writing, power and gender in Esther and its literary afterlife. It utilizes the hermeneutical framework of feminist literary theory, as well as drawing upon narratology and linguistic theory related to gender and power, and textual theory related to metatextuality and intertextuality, in order to explore the ways in which the narrator, the canonization process and the reception history of the text have functioned to constrain and restrain Esther’s authorial identity and status, and conversely the places and spaces where it has been developed and emphasised. Key areas of exploration include the writing culture of the Late Persian and Early Hellenistic periods, creative rewritings of Esther in...
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