Djuna Barnes and Theology

Modernism religion and queer bodies come together in this study of Djuna Barnes's writings and art. Examining the role of Barnes's theological imagination in relation to a phenomenology of suffering joy and sexed embodiment this book unfolds an intricate synthesis of theology psychoanalysis and narrative theory to interrogate how queerness informs her art.<br/><br/> Providing an original contribution to religious and literary theory Ng develops a neo-ontological account of melancholy in relation to the myth of the Fall and provides a novel framework for understanding comedy and tragedy in relation to the question of theodicy.<br/><br/> Presented in light of a large body of new archival evidence Barnes's works are also examined for the first time in relation to a wide range of intertextual and intermedial encounters including the medieval mysticism of Marguerite Porete Stravinsky's music 16th- and 18th-century engravings by Albrecht Dürer and Joseph Ottinger and French and Russian literature from Baudelaire and Lautréamont to Proust and Dostoevsky.