Queering Faith in Fantasy Literature

Fantasy literature inhabits the realms of the orthodox <i>and</i> heterodox the divine <i>and</i> demonic simultaneously making it uniquely positioned to imaginatively re-envision Christian theology from a position of difference. Having an affinity for the monstrous and the 'other' and a preoccupation with desires and forms of embodiment that subvert dominant understandings of reality fantasy texts hold hitherto unexplored potential for articulating queer and feminist religious perspectives.<br/><br/>Focusing primarily on fantastic literature of the mid- to late twentieth century this book examines how Christian theology in the genre is dismantled re-imagined and transformed from the margins of gender and sexuality. Aligning fantasy with Derrida's theories of deconstruction Taylor Driggers explores how the genre can re-figure God as the 'other' excluded and erased from theology. Through careful readings of C.S. Lewis's <i>Till We Have Faces </i> Angela Carter's <i>The Passion of New Eve</i> and Ursula K. Le Guin's <i>The Left Hand of Darkness</i> and the Earthsea novels Driggers contends that fantasy can challenge cis-normative heterosexual and patriarchal theology. Also engaging with the theories of Hélène Cixous Luce Irigaray Marcella Althaus-Reid and Linn Marie Tonstad this book demonstrates that whilst fantasy cannot save Christianity from itself nor rehabilitate it for marginalised subjects it confronts theology with its silenced others in a way that bypasses institutional debates on inclusion and leadership asking how theology might be imagined otherwise.