Jonah in 20th Century Literature

The biblical book of Jonah has been the subject of multiple literary retellings, ranging from individual poems to whole novels and theatrical dramas. This article focuses on interaction with the book of Jonah in 20th-century world literature, where Jonah becomes our alter ego; he embodies our own st...

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主要作者: Tiemeyer, Lena-Sofia 1969- (Author)
格式: 电子 文件
语言:English
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出版: MDPI 2022
In: Religions
Year: 2022, 卷: 13, 发布: 7
Further subjects:B Ancient Israel
B Prophetic Literature
B Literature
B Hebrew prophets
B Jonah
B Judaism
B reception exegesis
B history of interpretation
B Novels
B Poetry
B Reception History
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总结:The biblical book of Jonah has been the subject of multiple literary retellings, ranging from individual poems to whole novels and theatrical dramas. This article focuses on interaction with the book of Jonah in 20th-century world literature, where Jonah becomes our alter ego; he embodies our own struggles with God. I shall highlight three common tropes in the retellings: (1) Several retellings use the character of Jonah to express a person’s failure to escape God’s calling. Others use him to explore the Jewish experience of never being able to run away from being chosen by God. (2) Other retellings turn the trope of “the fleeing Jonah” into “Jonah the refugee”: Jonah is a man whom God abandoned. These retellings stem from Jonah 2:5 (Eng. 2:4] where Jonah expresses how he is cast out from God’s presence. They gain further inspiration from the affinity between the dialogue between God and Jonah in Jonah 4 and that between Cain and God in Gen 4. This intertextuality fashions Jonah as a type for the “wandering Jew.” (3) Yet another set of retellings employs the figure of Jonah to discuss God’s justice and his perceived failure to be unmerciful.
ISSN:2077-1444
Contains:Enthalten in: Religions
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.3390/rel13070661