Poetics and Time: An Introduction to Theological Poetics

Author: Liu Guangyao
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-06-01
Features: This book is dedicated to authentically and systematically demonstrating that genre, as a self-aware form of literary cognition, is an entity-based literary cognitive method, reflecting the intuitive manifestation of human "being-in-the-moment." Human "being-in-the-moment" has three dimensions—present, past, and future—thus genres are divided into three types: lyrical, narrative, and dramatic. These genres respectively articulate human "being-in-the-present"—"Who am I?" (present), "being-in-the-past"—"Where do I come from?" (past), and "being-in-the-future"—"Where am I going?" (future). They are also associated with emotion—literature of listening, reason—literature of seeing, and will—literature of belief. Since existence itself exists in the world according to its own "image" and the "pattern" by which it creates temporal things in the world from the logical within itself, and since the Christian portrayal of the Trinity as the "being-itself" of God is clearly more truthful, the three dimensions of human "being-in-the-moment" and the three genres correspond to the three Persons of the Triune God. Whether in terms of chronological order or their intrinsic poetic qualities and functions, the three genres exhibit isomorphic relationships with the three Persons of God, ultimately converging toward the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. On this foundation, the book offers new interpretations of the epistemological features of various genres, their related stylistic characteristics, and numerous fundamental poetic categories and concepts such as "representation," "representation," and "mimesis." It also proposes a series of new concepts and categories, presenting a new pathway for theology to move toward poetics and vice versa.