Shaming The Devil
Subtitle: Essays In Truthtelling
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Published: August 15, 2004
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 231
ISBN-13: 9780802848949
Subjects: Christian life & practice; Popular culture; Religious aspects; Literary Collections; Religion - Christian Life; Literature: Classics; Truth; Christian Life - Pop Culture Issues; Essays; Christianity; Truth in literature
First sentence: In Shakespeare's first Henry IV play, one of the rebels against the king, a Welshman named Owen Glendower, lays claim to marvelous magical powers and supernatural gifts.
Description: "Shaming the Devil offers a series of reflections that explore how hard it is to tell the truth about the world of culture - and how central that task is to the Christian life." "Employing the literary essay as a means for cultural criticism and using other writers and thinkers as friends and foils in his quest, Alan Jacobs revisits the question asked by Pilate and so many others throughout history: "What is truth?"" "In the first part of the book, Jacobs contemplates the work of people whom he takes to be exemplary truth seekers: Rebecca West, W. H. Auden, Albert Camus, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Linda Gregerson, and Leon Kass. He then engages writers who challenge the search for truth: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Iris Murdoch, Wole Soyinka, Philip Pullman, and Anne Carson. The third section of the book consists of a single lengthy essay that pursues the provocative question of whether today's computer technology helps or hinders us in our pursuit of truth."--BOOK JACKET.