In thinking about Justice, we ignore Love to our peril. Loving Justice, Living Shakespeare asks why love is considered a 'soft' subject, fit for the arts and religion perhaps, but unfit for boardrooms
The Curse of Cain confronts the inherent ambiguities of biblical stories on many levels and, in the end, offers an alternative, inspiring reading of the Bible that is attentive to visions of plenitud
In this graceful and compelling book, Regina Schwartz presents a powerful reading of Paradise Lost by tracing the structure of the poem to the pattern of "repeated beginnings" found in the Bible. In b
An English professor explores the problems posed by God's exclusion of Cain in the biblical story, arguing that the very concept of monotheism has led to a violent nationalism and an "us-versus-them"
Many scholars have looked for, found, and celebrated the seeds of their own secular society in the poetry of Reformation England, says Schwartz (English, Northwestern U.), but that is not is intention
Sacramental Poetics at the Dawn of Secularism asks what happened when the world was shaken by challenges to the sacred order as people had known it, an order that regulated both their actions and beli
Despite Milton's preoccupation with origins, these elude him: his creation stories are always mediated. Even the creation of the universe is not depicted as a single event that occurred once and for all time in a distant past; instead, world-order must be perpetually reasserted, before the ever present threat of chaos. That description of Milton's universe also applies to his other creation, the poem, where the chaos that forever threatens is the abyss of interpretation. Milton's creations are not asserted despite this threat, but because of it; that is, chaos does not simply threaten to undo order, for chaos inheres in it. While Milton's inability to discover a privileged origin allies him with postmodernism - and so this study, originally published in 1988, engages thinkers like Freud, Nietzsche, Derrida, and Lacan - that insight is far more ancient. According to Regina Schwartz, the Bible offers Milton his pattern of repeated beginnings.