{"id":228,"date":"2014-03-19T15:14:06","date_gmt":"2014-03-19T20:14:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/williamfranke\/?page_id=228"},"modified":"2024-12-05T16:05:22","modified_gmt":"2024-12-05T21:05:22","slug":"books","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/williamfranke\/homepage\/books\/","title":{"rendered":"Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

Books by William Franke
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(Click on titles or covers for detailed information and reviews)<\/span><\/h3>\n
Pandemics and Apocalypse in World Literature: The Hope for Planetary Salvation<\/a>\u00a0(Routledge 2025<\/a>)<\/h5>\n

\"Pandemics<\/p>\n

Publishers Website for Pandemics and Apocalypse in World Literature<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

William Franke delves into how disease and death force humanity to confront its deepest vulnerabilities in this profound exploration of pandemics in literature. Much like apocalyptic events, pandemics raise fundamental questions about the viability of human society, the fragility of life, and the structures that bind us together. These crises level all distinctions, revealing the often-ignored truths about inequality, mortality, and our shared existence. Yet amidst the despair, the text argues for hope\u2014not as a solution to our vulnerability, but as an openness to life in all its uncertainty. This hope inspires us to transcend self-preservation, fostering solidarity and collective action toward a more meaningful life. The book illuminates the inexpressible dimensions of these world-shattering experiences through personal witness and reflection, offering a powerful meditation on the human condition.<\/span><\/p>\n

–Prof. Massimo Lollini<\/strong>, <\/span>Professor Emeritus of Italian<\/span><\/em>, University of Oregon, USA<\/span><\/p>\n

Pandemics and Apocalypse in World Literature<\/span><\/em> is not just a scholarly survey but a constructive approach that gives itself the task to wrest possibilities of an eschatological hope from the night of apocalyptic despair. Written in the wake of the recent pandemics, the work deploys negative theology at its most creative possibility: it consists of an infinite affirmation of the unconditioned which nevertheless remains irreducibly ineffable. Franke brings together, without reducing their disparate character, the agonal traits of the end and the beginning, of despair and hope, of the abyss of the night and the first morning glow; and he shows, through rigorous exegesis of some of the very difficult texts, that perhaps the only task that is worthy today is to see the possibility of the radical, incalculable alterity that our history never ceases exposing us to. Dense, profound, thought-provoking.<\/span><\/p>\n

–Prof. Saitya Brata Das<\/strong>, <\/span>Associate Professor<\/span><\/em>, JNU, India<\/span><\/p>\n

William Franke’s history of pandemic literature, from the ancient world to COVID, helps us understand what we are all still wondering about: what exactly happened to the us in 2020? The pandemic made us all more aware\u3000of the contingency of order, and the religious significance of this awarness, while overlooked by many, is for Franke the big take away. An eye-opener.<\/span><\/p>\n

–Prof. Sean J. McGrath<\/strong>, <\/span>Professor<\/span><\/em>, Memorial University, Canada<\/span><\/p>\n

William Franke’s book is exceptionally important as it masterfully combines three areas of expertise: literary, anthropological, and philosophical-theological. On one hand, it offers an erudite and nearly unprecedentedly broad reconstruction of the phenomenology of the plague from its origins to the present, covering not only Western cultures but also Jewish and Chinese perspectives. On the other hand, it presents a sociological reflection on the deep-rooted causes of the plague\u2019s reemergence (today in the form of Covid-19) and its philosophical and existential implications. Saint Paul’s saying, <\/span>spes contra spem (hope against hope)<\/span><\/em> \u3000is reimagined and explored within the context of apophatic theology. The reference to the Native American model of vital experience, along with Western and Eastern mysticism, underscores the depth of this approach.<\/span><\/p>\n

–Walter Minella<\/strong>, Philosopher in Neurotheoretical Research Group, Pavia, Italy<\/span><\/p>\n

William Franke meditates on the currently constitutive crisis of human materiality, as it manifests in the collective imbalance symptomatized by an epidemic. and crashes in on every shoreline of our ecological future. In his distinctive reading of the unspeakability of our circumstance through <\/span>apophasis<\/span><\/em>, and the intensity of the crisis through <\/span>apokalypsis,<\/span><\/em> \u3000fresh insight breaks through for more spirited collective response.<\/span><\/p>\n

–Prof. Catherine Keller<\/strong>, G.T. Cobb Professor of Constructive Theology, Drew Theological School, USA<\/span><\/p>\n

Don Quixote<\/em>‘s Impossible Quest for the Absolute in Literature:\u00a0<\/em>Fiction, Reflection, and Negative Theology <\/em>(Routledge 2024)<\/a><\/h5>\n

\"Don<\/p>\n

Critics Views:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is one of the very best, most interesting studies of Cervantes\u2019\u00a0Don Quixote<\/i>\u00a0that I have read in some time. . . . I consistently found myself engaged by the argument, fascinated by the detailed analyses, and impressed by the depth of thought in evidence in this work. It\u2019s clear that Franke really \u201cgets\u201d the complexity and the importance of Don Quixote, and he does a superb job communicating this to the reader. . . .In a scholarly landscape that is littered with studies of Don Quixote that often fail to do justice to Cervantes\u2019 text, Franke\u2019s study stands out for the way in which it truly captures the profundity of the work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Anthony J. Cascardi<\/b>, Sidney and Margaret Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature,\u00a0University of California<\/i>, Berkeley<\/p>\n

A celebrated scholar\u00a0of\u00a0Dante and of the discipline known as apophatic theology or negative theology, William Franke in Don Quixote\u2019s\u00a0Impossible Quest for the Absolute in Literature<\/i>\u00a0offers us a tour-de force\u00a0interpretation\u00a0of\u00a0how Cervantes searches for\u00a0God\u2019s revelation of\u00a0truth in theologically diverse\u00a0 apophatic discourses. Franke\u2019s exegetical reflections converse with Ortega\u2019s, Unamuno\u2019s, and\u00a0Zambrano\u2019s respective meditations on Cervantes\u2019s masterpiece, allowing the\u00a0reader to get a taste of the parodic\u00a0laughter in\u00a0Don<\/i>\u00a0Quixote<\/i>, a mode of discourse that\u00a0speaks (or rather\u00a0un-speaks) of the impossible quest for the transcendent and\u00a0the divine. Franke\u2019s is a\u00a0complex and excellent\u00a0book that sheds insight upon Don Quixote\u2019s experience of the divine around him.<\/p>\n

\u2013Antonio Cortijo Oca\u00f1a<\/b>, Professor,\u00a0University of California,<\/i>\u00a0Santa Barbara<\/p>\n

William Franke\u2019s\u00a0Don Quixote\u2019s Impossible Quest for the Absolute in Literature: Fiction, Reflection, and Negative Theology<\/i>\u00a0could hardly be a more ambitious project, and I believe that the results are brilliant. Professor Franke has analyzed\u00a0Don Quixote\u00a0<\/i>using his unique and wide-ranging background in literature, culture, theology, and philosophy, not to mention his familiarity with the meta- offspring of Cervantes\u2019s work. I find the framing of the theses and arguments to be superb. The critic lays the foundations for his particular readings, upon which readers can reflect and debate.<\/p>\n

-Edward H. Friedman,\u00a0<\/b>Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor in the Humanities,\u00a0Vanderbilt University,\u00a0Tennessee<\/p>\n

Dantologies: Theoretical and Theological Turns in Dante Studies <\/span><\/em>(<\/span><\/a>Routledge 2024) Routledge Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Divine Vision of Dante’s <\/span><\/em>Paradiso<\/span>: The Metaphysics of Representation\u00a0<\/span><\/em>(Cambridge University Press, 2021)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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Publishers Website for The Divine Vision of Dante’s Paradiso<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

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Dante\u2019s Vita nuova and the New Testament: Hermeneutics and the Poetics of Revelation <\/a><\/em>(Cambridge University Press, 2021)<\/span><\/pre>\n
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Publisher’s Website<\/a>\u00a0for The Vita Nuova and the New Testament<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n
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Dante’s <\/a><\/em>Paradiso<\/a> and the Theological Origins of Modern Thought: Toward a Speculative Philosophy of Self-Reflection<\/a> <\/em>(Routledge, 2021)<\/p>\n
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Publisher\u2019s Website \u2013 Routledge \u2013<\/a> for Dante’s Paradiso and the Theological Origins of Modern Thought: Toward a Speculative Philosophy of Self-Reflection<\/em><\/p>\n
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On the Universality of What is Not: The Apophatic Turn in Critical Thinking<\/em> (University of Notre Dame Press, 2020)<\/a><\/p>\n
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Apophatic Paths from Europe to China: Regions Without Borders <\/span><\/em>(SUNY Press, Chinese Philosophy and Culture series, edited by Roger Ames,\u00a0 2018)<\/a><\/p>\n
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A Theology of Literature: The Bible as Revelation in the Tradition of the Humanities<\/span><\/em> (Wipf&Stock [Cascade], 2017)<\/a><\/p>\n
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Secular Scriptures: Modern Theological Poetics in the Wake of Dante<\/span><\/em> (The Ohio State University Press, Religion and Postsecular Studies series, edited by Lori Branch, 2016)<\/a><\/p>\n
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The Revelation of Imagination: From Homer and the Bible through Virgil and Augustine to Dante<\/a><\/span><\/em> (Northwestern University Press, 2015)<\/p>\n
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A Philosophy of the Unsayable<\/a><\/span><\/em> (University of Notre Dame Press, 2014)<\/p>\n
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Dante and the Sense of Transgression:\u00a0 “The Tresspass of the Sign”<\/span>\u00a0<\/em> (Bloomsbury Academic [Continuum], 2013)<\/a><\/p>\n
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Poetry and Apocalypse: Theological Disclosures of Poetic Language\u00a0 <\/span><\/em>(Stanford University Press, 2009)<\/a><\/p>\n
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Dichtung und Apokalypse: Theologische Erschliessungen der dichterischen Sprache<\/span><\/em> (Tyrolia Press, University of Salzburg Studies in Theology, 2012)<\/a><\/p>\n
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On What Cannot Be Said: Apophatic Discourses in Philosophy, Religion, Literature, and the Arts<\/span><\/em> (University of Notre Dame Press, 2007)<\/a><\/p>\n
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Dante’s Interpretive Journey <\/span><\/em>(University of Chicago Press, Religion and Postmodernism series, edited by Mark Taylor, 1996)<\/a><\/p>\n
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Transcendence, Immanence, and Intercultural Philosophy<\/span><\/em>, eds. Nahum Brown and William Franke (Palgrave MacMillan, 2017)<\/a><\/p>\n
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forthcoming September 2021:<\/p>\n
The Divine Vision of Dante’s Paradiso: The Metaphysics of Representation<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021)<\/p>\n
Dante’s Vita nuova and the New Testament: Hermeneutics and the Poetics of Revelation<\/em><\/p>\n
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021)<\/p>\n
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Books by William Franke broken down by Subject Area <\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n
(click on titles for detailed information)<\/span>
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Apophatic Philosophy
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On the Universality of What is Not: The Apophatic Turn in Critical Thinking <\/span><\/a><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n
Apophatic Paths from Europe to China: Regions Without Borders<\/span> <\/a><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n
A Philosophy of the Unsayable<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n
On What Cannot Be Said: Apophatic Discourses in Philosophy, Religion, Literature, and the Arts<\/span><\/em> <\/a><\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Volume 1: Classical Formulations<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Volume 2: Modern and Contemporary Transformations<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n
Transcendence, Immanence, and Intercultural Philosophy<\/span><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n
Theory and Criticism<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\u00a0Don Quixote<\/em>‘s Impossible Quest for the Absolute in Literature:\u00a0<\/em><\/a>Fiction, Reflection, and Negative Theology\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/h3>\n
A Theology of Literature: The Bible as Revelation in the Tradition of the Humanities<\/span><\/em><\/a><\/h3>\n
Secular Scriptures: Modern Theological Poetics in the Wake of Dante<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n
The Revelation of Imagination: From Homer and the Bible through Virgil and Augustine to Dante<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n
Poetry and Apocalypse: Theological Disclosures of Poetic Language<\/span><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n
Dante and Philosophy\/Theology<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Dantologies: Theoretical and Theological Turns in Dante Studies\u00a0(<\/a>Routledge 2023) Routledge Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/h3>\n
Dante\u2019s Vita nuova and the New Testament: Hermeneutics and the Poetics of Revelation<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/h3>\n
The Divine Vision of <\/a>Dante\u2019s <\/a><\/em>Paradiso:<\/a> The Metaphysics of Representation<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n
Dante\u2019s <\/a><\/em>Paradiso<\/a> and the Theological Origins of Modern Thought: Toward a Speculative Philosophy of Self-Reflection<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n
Dante and the Sense of Transgression:\u00a0 “The Trespass of the Sign” \u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n
Dante’s Interpretive Journey <\/span><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n
************************************************************************************************ Books and Articles by Others about William Franke’s Work<\/a><\/p>\n
Books by Others about William Franke’s Books + <\/em>General Review Essays<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n
Contemporary Debates in Negative Theology and Philosophy<\/a>, e<\/em>ds. Nahum Brown and J. Aaron Simmons (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017) (xi + 464 pages), Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion Series\u00a0 (includes responses by William Franke to each of fourteen essays)<\/p>\n
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Syndicate Theology<\/em>, vol. 3, issue 2, March\/April (2016) \u201cWilliam Franke, A Philosophy of the Unsayable,<\/em>\u201d<\/a> pp. 101-148<\/p>\n
(online<\/a> and print versions available)<\/p>\n
\"Syndicate_Page_1\"<\/a><\/p>\n
Syndicate Theology Forum on A Philosophy of the Unsayable <\/em>by William Franke <\/span><\/p>\n
4.11.16 | <\/span>  Kendall Cox<\/a> <\/span><\/h2>\n
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Symposium Introduction<\/h5>\n
 \"Kendall<\/span>  Kendall Cox<\/span> <\/span> <\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Symposium Panelists<\/h4>\n
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\"Sai<\/span>  Sai Bhatawadekar<\/span> <\/span><\/div>\n
\"W.C.<\/span>  W.C. Hackett<\/span> <\/span><\/div>\n
\"Kevin<\/span>  Kevin Hart<\/span> <\/span><\/div>\n
\"J.<\/span>  J. Aaron Simmons<\/span> <\/span><\/div>\n
\"Stephen<\/span>  Stephen Palmquist<\/span> <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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General Review Essays:<\/strong><\/p>\n
Steven Knepper, “Literary Revelations: On William Franke and the Bible,<\/a>“<\/a>\u00a0Voegelin Review\u00a0<\/em>August 24, 2024<\/p>\n
William C. Hackett \u201cFitting a Candle for its Flame: William Franke\u2019s Literary Theologico-Philosophy,\u201d Religion and Literature<\/em> 48\/2 (Summer 2016): 197-209<\/a><\/p>\n
J. Aaron Simmons, \u201cDiAagnosing Predicaments and Attending to Futures: Responding to William Franke\u2019s Account of the \u201cPredicament of Philosophy of Religion\u00a0Today\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n
Sabine Lenore M\u00fcller, \u201cApophasis as a Means of Expressing Ecological Indeterminacy: Reading Modernist Poetry with William Franke\u2019s <\/a>A Philosophy of the Unsayable,\u201d Contemporary Debates in Negative Theology and Philosophy, <\/a><\/span><\/em> pp 295-320<\/span>
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Critique of “William Franke’s Transcendent Apophaticism” by Roger T. Ames, “Getting Past Transcendence,” in Transcendence, Immanence, and Intercultural Philosophy, <\/em>eds. Nahum Brown and William Franke (New York: Palgrave, 2016), pp. 5-33<\/a><\/p>\n
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Serial presentation in reverse order of appearance of William Franke’s books (duplicates information in individual book files)<\/span>
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Apophatic Paths from Europe to China: Regions Without Borders<\/h2>\n
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Video-recorded Lecture: Method and Mysticism in Intercultural Philosophy<\/a><\/p>\n
Video-recorded Lecture: Rethinking Cultural Universality Today and the Question\u00a0 of Theological Transcendence<\/a><\/p>\n
Publisher\u2019s Website: SUNY Press. Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture, edited by Roger Ames<\/a><\/p>\n
An encounter between Franke\u2019s philosophy of the unsayable and Eastern apophatic wisdom in the domains of poetry, thought, and culture.<\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n
In Apophatic Paths from Europe to China<\/em>, William Franke brings his original philosophy of the unsayable, previously developed from Western sources such as ancient Neoplatonism, medieval mysticism, and postmodern negative theology, into dialogue with Eastern traditions of thought. In particular, he compares the Daoist Way of Chinese wisdom with Western apophatic thought that likewise pivots on recognizing the nonexistent, the unthinkable, and the unsayable. Leveraging Fran\u00e7ois Jullien\u2019s exegesis of the Chinese classics\u2019 challenge to rethink the very basis of life and consciousness, Franke proposes negative theology as an analogue to the Chinese model of thought, which has long been recognized for its special attunement to silence at the limits of language. Crucial to Franke\u2019s agenda is the endeavor to discern and renew the claim of universality, rethought and reconfigured within the predicament of philosophy today considered specifically as a cultural or, more exactly, inter<\/em>cultural predicament.<\/span><\/p>\n
\u201cFranke rethinks East-West philosophical traditions to show the subcurrents in Western thought that correspond to the centrality of apophasis in Chinese and Asian thought, whether it be the empty transcendent or the Way as indicator or allusion. He shows how apophatic thought confounds the transcendent-immanent duality and reworks it into an inseparability that can be consequential for our philosophical understanding of a \u2018natural\u2019 universality.\u201d \u2014 Prasenjit Duara, author of The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future<\/em><\/p>\n
\u201cThe broad coverage of William Franke\u2019s book is impressive as it discusses many issues in philosophy, religion, and literature, but at the same time it also has a clear focus and a special \u2018apophatic\u2019 approach to the various issues in the humanities. It is innovative, creative, and makes an important contribution to East-West comparative studies and cross-cultural understanding. Highly recommended.\u201d \u2014 Zhang Longxi, author of From Comparison to World Literature<\/em><\/p>\n
\u201cBy highlighting Western phenomena that are comparable to the Chinese, mainly in the apophatic tradition, Franke succeeds in exposing the biases and blind spots in Jullien\u2019s as well as in Hall\u2019s and Ames\u2019s respective treatment of Chinese \u2018philosophy.\u2019 This book will stand as an important resource for the future of scholarly debates in these areas.\u201d \u2014 Karl-Heinz Pohl, editor of Chinese Thought in a Global Context: A Dialogue Between Chinese and Western Philosophical Approaches<\/em><\/p>\n
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A Theology of Literature: The Bible as Revelation in the Tradition of the Humanities<\/h2>\n
\"Theology<\/a><\/p>\n
Theology of Literature – Franke.cover<\/a><\/h2>\n
\u201cWell known for his distinguished work on mysticism and the apophatic, in this new monograph William Franke offers a remarkable development in the field of literature and theology. Building on the foundations laid by earlier scholars in both biblical studies and literature, Franke examines different genres in both testaments, from myth, epic, the prophetic, the apocalyptic, and the gospel, to offer a biblical theology that is inherent within the text rather than imposed externally upon it. It is a brilliant example of what Paul Ricoeur once called thinking biblically, and will be a profoundly important book for anyone within the humanities as well as theologians, liturgists, and biblical critics.\u201d
\n\u2014David Jasper, University of Glasgow<\/p>\n
\u201cWilliam Franke\u2019s book demonstrates the variegated way in which the Bible provides \u2018a model for humanities texts.\u2019 Not only does he rightly seek to relate the reading of the Bible to other texts in the humanities, but also underlines the fundamental importance which the Bible has had in its contribution to hermeneutics. Historical contextuality, and the way which texts are a means of self-reflection, have been part and parcel of engagement with the Bible down the centuries and are all too easily ignored in modern biblical scholarship.\u201d
\n\u2014Christopher Rowland, University of Oxford<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a brilliant new book by one of the world\u2019s most accomplished scholars in the area of literature and theology. Offering a lucid and compelling account of the nature of revelation, Franke reads a range of biblical texts in ways that are simultaneously thought-provoking, illuminating, readable, and constructive. A Theology of Literature is a wonderful achievement, and certainly worth reading.\u201d
\n\u2014Mark Knight, Lancaster University<\/p>\n
\u201cWilliam Franke views the Bible with a fresh eye. He has the scholar\u2019s learning, the theologian\u2019s quest for revelation, and the poet\u2019s understanding of where language can take us. He writes with extraordinary clarity about complex issues and texts; he gives a new sense of all that the literature of the Bible has in store.\u201d
\n\u2014Peter S. Hawkins, Yale Divinity School<\/p>\n
REVIEWS <\/a><\/p>\n
David Jasper in Literature and Theology<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n
Publisher’s Website<\/a><\/p>\n
Franke_Presskit<\/a><\/p>\n
Kindle Edition<\/a><\/p>\n
Chris Benda interview on A Theology of Literature: The Bible as Literature in the Tradition of the Humanities<\/a><\/p>\n
Secular Scriptures: Modern Theological Poetics in the Wake of Dante<\/h2>\n
Link to publishers web page about this book<\/a><\/p>\n
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\u201c<\/em>In a series of dazzling essays taking Dante as their starting point, William Franke finds the trace of religious meaning throughout different forms of modern poetry, whose gaps and discontinuities he claims point to the ineffable beyond language. The book will prove an immense provocation and stimulus to all those who thought they had sorted out the relation of theology to modern poetry.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2014Jeremy Tambling, University of Manchester<\/p>\n
\u201cIn twenty-five years of teaching a \u2018great books\u2019 curriculum, I have rarely read a study so finely attuned to the spiritual resonances of classic texts. I will be consulting William Franke\u2019s Secular Scriptures<\/em> for as long as I continue teaching and writing about the religious dimension of literature, and its enduring relevance to our \u2018secular age.\u2019\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2014Paul J. Contino, Pepperdine University<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Secular Scriptures<\/em>, William Franke rejects the received wisdom that sacred and secular are essentially opposed to one another. He does this by asking us to think about where these alleged oppositions in fact converge\u2014in a venerable Western literary tradition. Surveying a broad spectrum of works written \u2018in the wake of Dante,\u2019 he argues that \u2018self reflexivity,\u2019 subjective human experience and reflection, has become for modern poets the locus of revelation, a form of scripture. Building on his extensive previous explorations of ineffability, \u2018on what cannot be said,\u2019 he uncovers the richness\u2014both literary and philosophical \u2014of inventive language that speaks in order to reveal \u2018the spiritual mysteries of the letter,\u2019 to gain access to what ultimately lies beyond the reach of words.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u2014Peter Hawkins, Yale Divinity School<\/p>\n
\u201cI read Secular Scriptures<\/em> almost without putting the work down. Readers in fields from fin-de-si\u00e8cle<\/em> decadence to \u2018post-postmodernism\u2019 in poetry, especially those with interest in religion and literature studies, will be delighted by the way Dante is recast here to preface twentieth- and twenty-first-century developments. Franke\u2019s way of thinking backwards from recent postsecular theory is beguiling and transformative; the movement forward in the final chapter, via Dante\u2019s emerging again at the end as at the beginning, is really rather beautiful.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2014Romana Huk, University of Notre Dame<\/p>\n
\u201cWilliam Franke has written, in a luminous prose, an enthralling book about a pivotal issue in literary studies: the esthetics of visionary literature.\u00a0The questions Franke raises\u2014philosophy of language, the nature of mystical insights, their modes of representation, and the revelations of poetic knowledge\u2014find in Dante, in the Romantic poets of Europe, and in the radical philosophical speculations of the twentieth century a fascinating articulation through which the reader can experience the depths of the high culture of the West.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u2014Giuseppe Mazzotta, Yale University<\/p>\n
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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Authorial Intentions: Interview with Chris Benda<\/a><\/p>\n
REVIEWS <\/a><\/p>\n
Chad Schrock in Literature and Theology<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n
Katherine Eggert, Studies in English Literature<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n
Secular Scriptures flyer<\/a><\/p>\n
Link to publishers web page about this book<\/a><\/p>\n
Link to Newberry Center Annual Dante Lecture<\/a><\/p>\n
The Revelation of Imagination:\u00a0\u00a0 From Homer and the Bible through Virgil and Augustine to Dante<\/a><\/h2>\n
Link to Project Muse: The Revelation of Imagination<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/a>Wayne Cristaudo, “The Wisdom of the Western Canon,” Review of Revelation of Imagination<\/a><\/p>\n
Rebecca Dark, Review of Revelation of Imagination<\/em> in Christianity and Literature<\/em> <\/a><\/p>\n
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“. . . a quite dazzling defense of poetry as central to human knowledge, by way of phenomenological considerations of the act of knowing. . . . At a moment in which the religious tradition and the secularization of culture seem to have nothing to say to each other–a catastrophic loss for both sides–Franke\u2019s development of the high theme of prophecy in all its meanings — and the role of the prophetic in secularization, and of the secular in prophecy! — in the most classic Western works is sorely needed–I am tempted to say, is itself prophetic.” \u00a0\u00a0 — Bainard Cowan, Professor of English, Cowan Chair in Literature, University of Dallas<\/p>\n
“The bottom line is this: \u201cThe Revelation of Imagination\u201d is a brilliant study of formative works that should never lose our attention.\u00a0 Indeed, the manuscript is itself ‘revelatory.\u201d’ \u00a0 –Peter Hawkins, Professor of Religion and Literature, Yale Divinity School<\/p>\n
“. . . the reader of Franke\u2019s book comes away with a sense of the differences and connections among these works, but also a sense of the \u201cwholeness\u201d of the tradition so eloquently discussed in Franke\u2019s conclusion. . . . It is a learned work, and belongs on a shelf that includes Auerbach\u2019s Mimesis<\/em>.”\u00a0 — Paul Contino, Blanche E. Seaver Professor of Humanities, Pepperdine University<\/p>\n
Publishers website: Northwestern University Press<\/a><\/p>\n
Wayne Cristaudo, “The Wisdom of the Western Canon,” Review of The Revelation of Imagination:<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n
“This is one of those rare and wonderful books that reflects a lifetime of learning and thinking. It is at once a powerful mediation upon five literary bulwarks of the Western tradition and a philosophical argument about the meaning of world-shaping literature. And, while the last fifty or so years have seen the institutional and disciplinary defeat of the idea of a Western canon and the kind of literary analysis of classic works that this book so glisteningly exemplifies, The Revelation of Imagination<\/em> amply demonstrates why Homer, the writers of the Bible, Virgil, Augustine, and Dante have been invaluable and inexhaustible conduits for the revelations of the human imagination. There is not a page where William Franke\u2019s ability to enter into the crafting and language of the work he is discussing does not
\nprofoundly enrich one\u2019s appreciation of the text. That he is able to take works and writers of whom so much has been written and yet make the reader feel how much more there is still to say and see, how inexhaustibly open these works are, is testimony to the mastery of his craft. His attention to stylistic detail, his ability to savour the intricate interweaving and balance of textual elements and to identify the semiotic ricochets and resonances of a text, to call upon the most brilliant and apposite insights of philosophers, theologians, and literary critics, to show the sheer power and grandeur of inventiveness and attentiveness to the human and divine conditions that elevate the works of these authors to a plane where they shaped their times and subsequently the human possibilities that followed in their wake, are all combined with a style that is at once devotional and enthusiastic, panoramic
\nand nuanced, authoritative and humble.”<\/p>\n
The European Legacy, 2017<\/a>
\nhttp:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1080\/10848770.2017.1291884<\/p>\n
See full review at:\u00a0The European Legacy, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n
Rebecca Dark, Review of Revelation of Imagination in Christianity and Literature:<\/a><\/p>\n
     Ever-increasing pressure on colleges and universities to demonstrate the marketability\r\n of their graduates in the business world is a source of anxiety for many of us\r\n in the humanities. We all know the importance of what we teach, even that the\r\n skills and knowledge we inculcate in our students are marketable, but we do not\r\n always find it easy to communicate the immediate value of the humanities to our\r\n culture. William Franke\u2019s project in The Revelation of Imagination: From Homer\r\n and the Bible through Virgil and Augustine to Dante is to \u2018\u2018focus on what is enduring\r\n and perennial rather than accommodated to the agenda of the moment,\u2019\u2019 but in so\r\n doing he also provides a powerful defense of the contemporary relevance of the\r\n \u2018\u2018revelations\u2019\u2019 great literature can provide (xi). Rereading five classic texts that he\r\n describes as aspiring \u2018\u2018to become the conscience and the consciousness of a whole\r\n civilization,\u2019\u2019 Franke demonstrates their power to articulate new truth for the\r\n immediate present of succeeding cultures.\r\n      Franke is an eminent scholar whose perhaps-best known works, including his\r\n 2007 anthology On What Cannot Be Said and his 2014 A Philosophy of the\r\n Unsayable, explore apophatic discourse. The Revelation of Imagination is every\r\n bit the strong scholarly work, replete with footnotes and references, one would\r\n expect. The extreme clarity and accessibility of the text, however, open it to a much\r\n wider audience than the scholarly academic community. Anyone interested in\r\n learning about the great texts Franke treats in the book will find it a wonderful\r\n reading guide. Each chapter could be read alone as an aid to understanding a\r\n specific text, but taken as a whole they offer a finely woven argument regarding\r\n the revelatory nature of great literature. While Franke\u2019s approach is post-secular in\r\n that it is open to and encourages finding transcendent meaning in literature, this\r\n work is literary rather than religious and would be useful even to those who do not\r\n adhere to a faith tradition.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Apeiron Centre posting<\/a><\/p>\n
Citation in Sleepreading<\/a><\/p>\n
Ordering<\/a><\/p>\n
Northwestern University Press Catalogue, p. 20<\/a><\/p>\n
Project Muse<\/a><\/p>\n
Link to Newberry Center Annual Dante lecture<\/a><\/p>\n
A Philosophy of the Unsayable<\/a><\/h2>\n
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This monograph proposes an original philosophy pivoting on analysis of the limits of language and explains why the encounter with what exceeds speech has become the crucial philosophical issue of our time.\u00a0 It also offers readings of literary texts, especially the poetic oeuvres of Paul Celan and Edmond Jab\u00e8s, in which the philosophical principles\u00a0 worked out on a theoretical plane are illustrated and put into practice.\u00a0 Finally, it engages with philosophical theologies and philosophies of religion in the debate over negative theology, demonstrating the irresistible infiltration of negative theology into the thinking even of those who attempt to deny or delimit it.\u00a0 Both extremes of Radical Orthodoxy and Secular Theology share in common not very fully acknowledged and sometimes explicitly repudiated premises in negative or apophatic theology, which surprisingly emerges as key to fostering genuine possibilities for dialogue among even the most antagonistic approaches to philosophical theology on the scene today.<\/p>\n
From University of Notre Dame Press<\/a>
\n\u201cWilliam Franke is an articulate spokesman for what cannot be said not only with regards to modern European poetry but also with respect to contemporary theology. A Philosophy of the Unsayable is essential reading for everyone working in religion and literature and in modern theology.\u201d \u2014 Kevin Hart, Edwin B. Kyle Professor of Christian Studies, University of Virginia<\/p>\n
\u201cBy now, it would seem that there could be no more to say about not-saying. Apophatic language and negative theology have been accused of meaninglessness, nihilism, and even ill-concealed ontologies. In this lovely and surprising book, William Franke not only deftly undoes these criticisms but shows that apophasis underlies and strangely grounds all language and thought, even of those very discourses that most vigorously reject it. A Philosophy of the Unsayable demonstrates with elegance that there is indeed more to say, and more that is both meaningful and important.\u201d \u2014 Karmen MacKendrick, Professor of Philosophy (Joseph C. Georg Endowed Professorship of Philosophy, 2009-12), Le Moyne College<\/p>\n
\u201cWilliam Franke is an eminent scholar in comparative literature, who is schooled in philosophy and religion. He is recognized as one of the most creative contemporary thinkers working at the double intersection of philosophy and literature and philosophy and theology. A Philosophy of the Unsayable shows an intellectual grasp of a dizzying array of discourses and sheds real light on all thinkers who are discussed.\u201d \u2014 Cyril O\u2019Regan, Huisking Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame<\/p>\n
“William Franke is a major voice in current discussions of \u201cReligion and Literature.\u201d One thing that makes him unusual, as well as highly valuable, is that unlike most people in the area he has a broad knowledge of philosophy, both ancient and modern; another unusual characteristic of this author is that his writing is firmly based in meticulous scholarship in several European languages. I have long been an admirer of his work, and I am pleased to say that the substantial typescript I have been given to read, A Philosophy of the Unsayable, has all the desirable qualities I have just indicated. There is one further quality that makes Professor Franke an author that Notre Dame University Press will want to retain: he writes a remarkably clear and engaging prose.”\u2014(Senior scholar writing anonymously for UNDP)<\/p>\n
INTERNET FORUMS<\/p>\n
J. Aaron Simmons, “Diagnosing Predicaments and Attending to Futures: Responding to William Franke\u2019s Account of the \u201cPredicament of Philosophy of Religion\u00a0Today”<\/a><\/p>\n
Syndicate online Symposium<\/a><\/p>\n
Per Caritatem<\/a><\/p>\n
Martin Shuster, Realism and Ineffability<\/a><\/p>\n
Boston University IPR Blog: Silence and Resilience in Suffering<\/a><\/p>\n
REVIEWS<\/p>\n
\u201cWilliam Franke has emerged as our foremost purveyor of what cannot be said.. . .this is a remarkable text, and deserves close attention at every level. Like all important texts, it raises questions for further interrogation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Andrew W. Hass, editor of Literature and Theology<\/em> (Oxford University Press).<\/p>\n
Andrew W. Hass, Literature and Theology<\/a><\/p>\n
\u201cFranke\u2019s book is . . . a thoughtful, provoking and often helpful exploration of an intellectually and spiritually demanding discourse.\u201d George Pattison, Theology<\/em> 111 (2): 144-46<\/p>\n
George Pattison, Theology<\/a><\/p>\n
Brett Gray, Anglican Theological Review<\/a><\/p>\n
Brett Gray review of A Philosophy of the Unsayable<\/em><\/a> pdf<\/p>\n
Andrea Aguti, Humanitas<\/a><\/p>\n
Andrea Aguti, Humanitas<\/a><\/p>\n
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A Philosophy of the Unsayable<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
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Symposium Introduction<\/h1>\n
by Kendall Cox<\/h3>\n
In A Philosophy of the Unsayable<\/em>, William Franke examines the \u201cvalences and varieties\u201d of what cannot be said\u2014from the indeterminacy of language to the infinite openness of thought to the ineffability of the divine and the unspeakability of suffering. The work reflects Franke\u2019s depth of study across the fields of philosophy, theology, and literature as a professor of Comparative Literature and Religious Studies at Vanderbilt University and of Philosophy and Religions at the University of Macao. Here he condenses and clarifies some of the main themes and assertions of his two edited volumes On What Cannot Be Said: Apophatic Discourses in Philosophy, Religion, Literature and the Arts<\/em> (2007). Both projects draw attention to \u201capophasis\u201d as a distinct genre that spans a host of related disciplines. Franke\u2019s concern is to identify and set in conversation certain resources in the Western intellectual tradition that figure as \u201ca kind of perennial counter-philosophy to the philosophy of Logos\u201d (1). \u201cApophasis\u201d specifically designates, for him, the \u201cnegation\u201d\u2014namely the \u201cself-negation\u201d\u2014of discourse (80). Franke discerns within discourses as manifold and varied as Neoplatonism, negative theology, medieval mysticism, Romantic poetry, Death of God theology, Radical Orthodoxy, and especially contemporary continental philosophy \u201cmajor monuments\u201d of what he calls an \u201capophatic culture\u201d (2). He concludes the work with the claim that \u201capophaticism is the soul of philosophy inasmuch as it critically questions everything that can be believed\u201d (328).<\/p>\n
\"Franke\"<\/a><\/p>\n
In the first few chapters of A Philosophy of the Unsayble<\/em>, Franke examines the theme of unsaybility in literature. Peppered with epigraphs and insights from literary figures such as Shakespeare, Rilke, H\u00f6lderlin, Dickenson, Beckett and many others, in these initial theoretical and literary-critical reflections, Franke turns to Hegel and post-Hegelian philosophy (chapters 1-2) as well as the \u201cpathbreaking\u201d post-holocust poetry of Paul Celan and Edmond Jab\u00e8s (chapter 3) (83). In the second half of the book, Franke more explicitly examines the relationship between philosophy and theology, enacting the \u201ctrans-philosophical thinking\u201d he commends (5). One of his goals is \u201cto situate apophatic thought as key to some of the most challenging developments and disputes in the philosophy of religion today\u201d and \u201cto mediate and unblock the deadlock between secularizing\u2026and theologizing approaches\u201d (274). He attempts to bridge discourses as apparently polarized as the \u201cpostsecular religious revivalist philosophy\u201d (or Radical Orthodoxy) of figures such as John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, and Graham Ward, on the one hand, and the secular or atheistic philosophy of Thomas Altizer, Slavoj \u017di\u017eek, Alain Badiou, Giorgio Agamben, and John Caputo, on the other (chapters 4-7). Franke says these discourses have a \u201ccommon basis in critical, apophatic insight\u201d (270). Apophasis is \u201cthe missing link.<\/p>\n
The way Franke relates philosophy, theology, and literature is a common thread in the responses comprising this symposium on his work. Franke believes that in the face of \u201cwhat cannot be said,\u201d 1) philosophy \u201cnecessarily becomes literary\u201d and 2) language is pushed \u201cin a direction which is best understood as theological\u201d (4).<\/p>\n
Sai Bhatawadekar highlights the performative quality of a \u201cphilosophy of the unsayable,\u201d integrating humor, hymnody, as well as some of her own aphoristic rhymes into her response. Bringing together modern German philosophy and South Asian Studies, Bhatawadekar\u2019s engagement with Franke is set against the backdrop of her upbringing in a Hindu household where, she says, the \u201cbizarre appearances\u201d of various gods and goddesses represented \u201cvery imaginative yet ultimately feeble attempts of depicting something beyond human capacities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kevin Hart, himself a theologian, philosopher, and poet, is well aware of the sorts of resonances Franke identifies across these distinct discourses. However, he is wary of collapsing the differences between the contemplative practices of medieval mysticism and, for example, the brokenness of language that marks post-Holocaust German literature. Hart suggests teasing out more thoroughly the various \u201cmodes\u201d in which unsayability \u201cimpinges on us.\u201d He also notes the fact that apophasis \u201cis ineluctably tied to\u201d kataphasis\u2014a point Aaron Simmons makes as well. Writing from the perspective of modern philosophy of religion, Simmons raises a number of other important questions, including whether the \u201cground between philosophy, literature, and religion\u201d might \u201cbe made a bit less slippery\u201d and whether the discussion would benefit from a broader engagement with analytic philosophy and epistemology.<\/p>\n
In light of the poetic and theological quality of Franke\u2019s writing, Stephen Palmquist specifically considers the question of whether it is \u201cproperly named philosophy.\u201d He believes Franke\u2019s claims about apophatic language could be grounded more clearly in an apophatic logic<\/em> that can make \u201csense out of language that might otherwise appear to be but a literary game.\u201d William C. Hackett too draws attention to the problem of language and identity. His response to Franke takes the form of an extended reflection on Aristotle\u2019s understanding of metaphor in light of Franke\u2019s criticism that metaphysics has been \u201cinterpreted narrowly as a deductive system and without regard for its allusive and largely poetical power of vision\u201d (39). Hackett, like Franke and some of the other panelists, notes the close affinity between the kind of apophatic questioning Franke describes and religious commitment. But Hackett wonders whether Franke\u2019s valorizing of \u201cleaving the question of religion undecided\u201d (269) is itself \u201can a priori decision constricting the possibility of divine revelation\u201d such that \u201cthe a priori character of (absolute) indecision\u201d becomes a nihilistic \u201caffirmation of the impossibility of a last word.\u201d<\/p>\n
In all, one of the most valuable dimensions of the book that surfaces in\u00a0this symposium is the profound connection between thought and life within Franke\u2019s \u201cphilosophy of the unsayable.\u201d It embodies the fact that, in Simmons\u2019 words, at its best \u201cphilosophy is itself<\/em> lived engagement.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Panelists<\/h1>\n
Christopher Hackett<\/h4>\n
Stephen R. Palmquist<\/h4>\n
J. Aaron Simmons<\/h4>\n
Kevin Hart<\/h4>\n
Sai\u00a0Bhatawadekar<\/h4>\n
About the Author<\/strong><\/h1>\n
William Franke<\/strong> is professor of philosophy and religions at the University of Macao and professor of comparative literature and religious studies at Vanderbilt University.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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COMMENTARIES<\/h2>\n
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\"Sai \u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n
A Personal Reaching Out<\/h3>\n
Sai Bhatawadekar<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\"W.C. \u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n
On \u201cSowing a God-Created Flame\u201d<\/h3>\n
W.C. Hackett<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
SYMPOSIUM EDITOR<\/h2>\n
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\"Kendall<\/p>\n
Kendall Cox<\/a><\/h3>\n
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FURTHER EDITIONS AND COMMENTS:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Project Muse<\/a> Search Browse Download<\/p>\n
Kindle electronic edition<\/a><\/p>\n
Comment by Ronald L. Hall, International\u00a0 Journal for\u00a0 Philosophy of Religion (2013) 73:1\u20133 3, on component article, <\/a>
\n“Apophasis as the Common Root of Radically Secular Radically Orthodox Theology<\/a>
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\nFranke_PhilosophyOfUnsayable_Announcement<\/a><\/p>\n
Good Reads <\/a><\/p>\n
Book Plug<\/a><\/p>\n
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For detailed critical engagement by 14 philosophers and cultural critics, see:<\/p>\n
Contemporary Debates in Negative Theology and Philosophy<\/a><\/p>\n
amazon \u2013 contents<\/a><\/p>\n
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Back Home\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n
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Dante and the Sense of Transgression:\u00a0 “The Tresspass of the Sign”<\/a><\/h2>\n
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\nOrder Form.pdf<\/a>
\nDante and the sense of Transgression Order Form 2013.pdf<\/a>
\nHardcover edition: Continuum:\u00a0 New Directions in Religion and Literature Series<\/a>
\nISBN: 9781441160423\u00a0 (paperback)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 9781441136916 (hardcover)
\n200 pages
\nIn Dante and the Sense of Transgression, William Franke combines literary-critical analysis with philosophical and theological reflection to cast new light on Dante\u2019s poetic vision. \u00a0Conversely, Dante\u2019s medieval masterpiece becomes our guide to rethinking some of the most pressing issues of contemporary theory.
\nBeyond suggestive archetypes like Adam and Ulysses that hint at an obsession with transgression beneath Dante\u2019s overt suppression of it, there is another and a prior sense in which transgression emerges as Dante\u2019s essential and ultimate gesture.\u00a0 His work as a poet culminates in the Paradiso in a transcendence of language towards a purely ineffable, mystical experience beyond verbal expression.\u00a0 Yet Dante conveys this experience, nevertheless, in and through language and specifically through the transgression of language, violating its normally representational and referential functions. \u00a0Paradiso\u2019s dramatic sky-scapes and unparalleled textual performances stage a deconstruction of the sign that is analyzed philosophically in the light of Blanchot, Levinas, Derrida, Barthes, and Bataille, as transgressing and transfiguring the very sense of sense.<\/p>\n
****<\/p>\n
\u201cWritten in elegant and astonishingly readable prose, William Franke’s volume gives a lucid portrait of a fundamental question that lies at the heart of Dante’s Divine Comedy and has resurfaced in contemporary French philosophical reflection: poetic theology as a radical, transgressive mode of knowledge.\u00a0 In mapping the ground of this fascinating debate, William Franke places Dante at the boundaries of thought and recovers the timeliness of his spiritual vision.\u00a0 This book is a must-read for historians of religion, Dante scholars, literary critics, and adepts of cultural studies.\u201d \u00a0 — Giuseppe Mazzotta, Yale University, USA<\/p>\n
\u201cCan language meaningfully point us to the divine? Is it possible for us to transcend our humanity to touch the mystery which surrounds it? How might the idolatrous projections of our ego be transgressed? These are just some of the questions provoked by William Franke’s scintillating book. By bringing Dante’s Paradiso and French Theory into mutually illuminating dialogue, Franke invites his readers to explore the outer limits of sense and meaning, and to consider seriously the theological implications of the unknowing at the heart of literary expression. His reflections will spark the interest not only of Dante scholars, theologians and literary theorists, but of anyone interested in probing the connections between literature and theology.\u201d\u00a0\u2013\u00a0 Vittorio Montemaggi, University of Notre Dame, USA<\/span><\/p>\n
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Interview with Chris Benda–Podcast<\/a><\/p>\n
George Corbett, Speculum<\/em> 89\/4 (2014) 1139-40<\/a><\/p>\n
Christian Moevs, Religion and Literature<\/em> 47\/2 (Summer 2015): 166-68<\/a><\/p>\n
“Overall, Franke\u2019s argument is both balanced and nuanced; he presents Dante as neither reactionary nor revolutionary, but, rather, as devout transgressor. Franke skillfully incorporates other arguments about transgression, such as Giuseppe Mazzotta\u2019s claim that Dante transgresses and transcends ethics in Paradiso to a world \u201cof ludic play and aesthetic performance\u201d (107). Franke also does an excellent job of distinguishing Dante’s thought from French philosophy while addressing the similarities between medieval apophaticism and French deconstructionism. He does not wish to turn Dante into a deconstructionist philosopher, nor does he attempt to transform deconstructionist philosophy into medieval theology. Rather, he puts them into fruitful conversation with each other.” –T. Niebuhr, Christianity & Literature <\/em>63 (<\/cite><\/a>September 2014 )<\/cite><\/a>: 533-536<\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
\u201cWilliam Franke has brought the harvest of French theory (especially Blanchot, with some Bataille, Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, and, in an appendix, a good dose of Levinas) to bear upon Dante\u2019s Paradiso<\/em>, focusing on the notion of transgression. He ably traces the many senses in which Dante\u2019s text, so apparently intent on affirming order, is in fact transgressive, and obsessed dualities, such as between the human and the divine, undone in a trasumanar. . . .\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n
Franke is wonderfully, persistently clear, as precise as one can be in elucidation ofFrench thought. The exercise of reading those texts with and against the Paradiso<\/em> illuminates both, as well as what is at stake for both literature and philosophy or theology.\u201d \u2013 Christian Moevs, Religion & Literature <\/em>47\/2 (Summer 2015): 166-68<\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
Book Colloquium in Tokyo, Japan on Dante and the Sense of Transgression: <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n
Transgression and Transcendence: What Makes Religion Radical? International Symposium on Dante and the Sense of Transgression <\/em>at ICU (International Christian University), Tokyo, Japan, October 10-12, 2013 <\/a><\/h3>\n
ICU conference poster<\/a>ICU conference poster<\/a> \"tokyo<\/a><\/p>\n
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Poetry and Apocalypse<\/a><\/h2>\n
Poetry and Apocalypse: Theological Disclosures of Poetic Language<\/h3>\n
\"\"<\/a>Stanford University Press<\/a>, 2009
\nreviews, excerpts, etc.<\/a>
\nselections at: Google Books<\/a><\/p>\n
Poetry and Apocalypse offers an interdisciplinary synthesis, combining a philosophical theory of dialogue, a literary-critical interpretation of poetic language in the apocalyptic tradition, and a negative theology that renews certain fundamental impulses and insights of revealed religion.\u00a0 It is concerned with finding the premises for dialogue between cultures, especially between religious fundamentalisms, like the Islamic, and modern Western secularism.\u00a0The thesis is that dialogue in general, in order to be genuinely open, needs to be able to open up to such a possibility as religious apocalypse in ways that can be understood best through the experience of poetry.\u00a0 The book interprets the Christian epic and prophetic tradition as a secularization of religious revelation that nevertheless preserves an understanding of the essentially apocalyptic character of truth and its disclosure in history.\u00a0The usually neglected negative theology that undergirds this apocalyptic tradition provides the key to a radically new and open understanding of apocalypse as inextricably religious and poetic at the same time.
\nReviewed by:<\/p>\n
Joel Harter, Journal of Religion<\/a> 90 (2010): 104-106 (pdf version<\/a>)
\nDorothy Z. Baker, Comparative Literature Studies 46\/4 (2009)<\/a>: 674-676
\nLee A. Jacobus, James Joyce Quarterly<\/a> 46\/3-4 (2009): 624-627\u00a0 In Project Muse<\/a>
\nLarry D. Bouchard, Religion and Literature<\/a> 43\/3 (2011): 249-52\u00a0 (pdf)<\/a>
\nJ. H. Sims, CHOICE: <\/em><\/strong>Current Reviews for Academic Libraries<\/em> <\/a><\/em>46.9 (May 2009): p1679.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
“Poetry and Apocalypse: Theological Disclosures of Poetic Language is a profound and radical study that holds many surprises . . . [W]e have long been convinced of the relevance of studies in religious thought, philosophy, and anthropology to literary scholarship. Poetry and Apocalypse gives evidence of the importance of literature and literary hermeneutics to religion, philosophy, and anthropology.”\u2014Dorothy Z. Baker, Comparative Literature Studies<\/p>\n
\u201cThe book\u2019s stated objective is \u2018a postmodern negative theology of poetic language\u2019 (ix) that is both theoretical and practical, contributing to both literary theory and theology and promoting peace through radical openness to dialogue, and it is to Franke\u2019s credit that the result is both challenging and accessible.\u201d\u2014Joel Harter, The Journal of Religion<\/em><\/p>\n
” . . .\u00a0 a performed negative theology. At such wakes and festivals, it is the praxis of recursive conversations\u2014Poetry and Apocalypse being an excellent example\u2014that disclose, indirectly, possibilities of transcendent openness.”\u2014Larry D. Bouchard, Religion and Literature<\/em><\/p>\n
“Poetry and Apocalypse will appeal to critics who credit a Christian interpretation of Joyce’s texts in part because its premises are carefully argued and theoretically balanced.” \u2014Lee A. Jacobus, James Joyce Quarterly<\/p>\n
“The importance of Poetry and Apocalypse<\/i> resides in the clarity of Franke’s views of the necessary relations between literature and theology as well as the authority that these views have by dint of being grounded in his deep knowledge of canonical sacred and secular literature over the centuries. I should also say that Franke is his own man; he does not represent a ‘school’ or even a fashion, and his book marks an original contribution to the growing field of religion and literature.”\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2014Kevin Hart, Monash University and University of Notre Dame<\/p>\n
“This is an ambitious book. It takes on big topics, difficult writers, and a range of discourses. Authors who venture into topics like ‘poetry and apocalypse’ are usually comfortable with big ideas and forays into theoretic discourse that shy away from concrete literary analysis. Among Franke’s virtues is his ability to do both in a prose that is graceful and accessible.”\u00a0\u00a0 \u2014Peter Hawkins, Boston University<\/p>\n
“Franke’s theory of poetic language as negative theology is persuasive and helpful in illuminating the complex relationship between religion and literature.”\u00a0\u00a0 \u2014Joel Harter, The Journal of Religion<\/i><\/p>\n
Google Scholar Citations<\/a><\/p>\n
Translation into German by Michael Sonntag and Ursula Liebing:<\/h3>\n
\"\"<\/a>Dichtung und Apokalypse: <\/a>
\nTheologische Erschliessungen der dichterischen Sprache<\/a><\/p>\n
Publishers Webpage<\/a><\/p>\n
Aus dem Amerikanischen von Ursula Liebing und Michael Sonntag
\nSalzburger Theologische Studien Band 39<\/a>
\nUniversity of Salzburg Studies in Theology, vol.\u00a039 (Intercultural 6)
\nInsbruck: Tyrolia Press, 2011
\nISBN 978-3-7022-3050-0
\n(216 pages)
\nDichtung und Apokalypse sucht nach den Pr\u00e4missen eines Dialogs zwischen den Kulturen, insbesondere zwischen religi\u00f6s-fundamentalistischen und modern-s\u00e4kularistischen Haltungen. Die These ist, dass Dialog generell, um wirklich offen zu sein, sich f\u00fcr die M\u00f6glichkeit der religi\u00f6sen Apokalypse \u00f6ffnen muss. Eine solche M\u00f6glichkeit l\u00e4sst sich am besten \u00fcber die dichterische Erfahrung verstehen. In diesem Sinne wird die christliche Epik in die Tradition der prophetischen \u00dcberlieferung eingebunden und als eine S\u00e4kularisierung der theologischen Offenbarung ausgelegt. Ihre Sichtweise besteht dennoch auf dem wesentlich apokalyptischen Charakter von Wahrheit und ihrer Erschlie\u00dfung im Laufe der Geschichte. Die oft vernachl\u00e4ssigte Negative Theologie, die dieser apokalyptischen \u00dcberlieferung zu Grunde liegt, bietet den Schl\u00fcssel f\u00fcr ein neues und offenes Verst\u00e4ndnis von Apokalypse in ihrer stets zugleich dichterischen wie religi\u00f6sen Natur.<\/p>\n
WILLIAM FRANKE ist Professor f\u00fcr Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft und f\u00fcr Religionswissenschaften an der Vanderbilt University in Tenessee \/ USA. Nach abgeschlossenen Magisterstudien in Philosophie und Theologie an der Oxford University und einem Doktorat in Komparatistik an der Stanford University war er Alexander von Humboldt-Stipendiat an der Universit\u00e4t Potsdam und Gastprofessor f\u00fcr Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft an der University of Hong Kong, sowie zuletzt Fulbright Professor am Zentrum Theologie Interkulturell und Studium der Religionen an der Universit\u00e4t Salzburg (2008). Zu seinen Publikationen z\u00e4hlen philosophische Betrachtungen \u00fcber Dante und verschiedene Dichter und Denker von den Griechen (z.B. Homer, Damascius) bis zur Postmoderne (Derrida, Celan etc.), sowie als bisherige Monographien Dante\u2019s Interpretive Journey (University of Chicago Press, 1996) und On What Cannot Be Said: Apophatic Discourses in Philosophy, Religion, Literature and the Arts (University of Notre Dame Press, 2007).<\/p>\n
On What Cannot Be Said<\/a><\/h2>\n
\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n
On What Cannot Be Said:\u00a0 Apophatic Discourses in Philosophy, Religion, Literature, and the Arts<\/h3>\n
Publisher’s Website:\u00a0 University of Notre Dame Press, 2007<\/a> Cover Image<\/a><\/p>\n
Amazon link<\/a>
\nThese volumes propose to bring into comparison with one another some of the most enduringly significant attempts, in different disciplines within Western culture, to define the limits of language, and perhaps to exceed them.\u00a0The tradition of negative theology is compared with poetry of the ineffable and philosophical reflections on language that tend to define areas of inviolable silence.\u00a0As pervasive a problem as the language of the unsayable in Western tradition can best be treated at the intersection between disciplines, signally philosophy, theology, and poetry.\u00a0It is, moreover, not the property of any one national tradition, nor is it peculiar to any historical period, and it demands the wide-ranging comparative treatment that this volume proposes.\u00a0Bringing together different disciplinary and cultural backgrounds is part of a design to catalyze open dialogue on \u201cwhat cannot be said\u201d lurking as an ineluctable provocation perhaps in all discourses.\u00a0An anthology of classical and contemporary readings that have been milestones in the apophatic tradition is a resource that is most necessary to serve this dialogue that is already well underway and gaining in intensity. The excerpted are itnroduced by detailed critical-theoretical essays, and the volumes are furnished each with general introductions and prefaces outlining a history of apophasis, ancient and modern, and a theory of apophasis as a genre and a mode of discourse.<\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
From Reviews of On What Cannot Be Said<\/p>\n
\u201cThese two volumes successfully realize a massive project: to propose and delineate a new field of discourse that provides a fresh approach to Western thought as a whole. In short, William Franke demonstrates the centrality of apophaticism, \u2018what cannot be said,\u2019 to the Western tradition, from Plato (and before) to Derrida (and beyond). . . . Franke\u2019s work is nothing short of brilliant. . . . Franke shows incredible breadth of knowledge, critical acumen, and creative prowess throughout . . . . . [The] two volumes [are] essential reading for philosophers, theologians, literary scholars, intellectual historians, critical theorists\u2014in short, anyone interested in an illuminating and vital perspective on just about any facet of Western arts and letters.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hackett Review.2<\/a><\/p>\n
\u201c. . . One of the most important and original contributions to the discussion of apophasis in recent years. . . . Franke\u2019s historical and disciplinary range, in light of his well-written and compelling essays, provides an illuminating insight into the pervasiveness of apophatic discourse. . . . Few others, maybe no others, provide the same clarity, coherence, and scope; few, maybe none, provide the same provocation to think further and more deeply, to think otherwise the tradition from which we come.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014Bailey Review<\/a><\/p>\n
“As an introduction to the phenomenon of apophatic discourse, Franke\u2019s anthology is a great success. It often displays astounding breadth of knowledge and scholarship on the part of its editor. . . . This volume offers the only introductory anthology of negative theology that I know of, and it is superb.”
\n
\n\u2014Bruce Milem, The Heythrop Journal, 51, no. 1 (2010): 174-175<\/a><\/p>\n
\u201cThe genius of Franke\u2019s two-volume critical anthology on apophatic discourses is the work\u2019s breadth and depth of engagement with the concept in variously distinct and even conflicting contexts.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe last and perhaps most commendable attribute of this volume for students in need of a reader like it is the remarkable quality of Franke\u2019s critical introductions for each text. These introductions demonstrate a depth and range of insight available only through careful and thorough research. It may be enough to merely collect these various sources in one place, but Franke has gone much further than that with the critical preparations he provides the reader for each new text. Each work sampled in the anthology receives a combination of the following: explanation of the historical context for the text, biographical details about the author, brief examination of the critical issues related to interpreting the text, discussion of the history of reception for the text, and thematic connections for the unit and the anthology to the particular text under consideration. In many cases, Franke provides his own translation of the works that he adds to his collection, and his attention to detail in this translation effort is evident on nearly every page. These characteristics alone inspire great confidence in the editor\u2019s careful consideration of and familiarity with the long, strange story of apophatic literature in Western culture. The additional benefit of introducing each work so carefully provides scholars both a convenient and reliable guide for apophatic texts previously unknown and also makes this collection an excellent resource to use with students in undergraduate and graduate courses. On What Cannot Be Said will be a leading resource for anyone studying apophasis and negative theology for many years to come.<\/p>\n
Worley Review of On What Cannot Be Said_ Apophatic Discourses in Philos<\/a> (click above to download complete review)<\/p>\n
Worley Review on Academia.edu<\/p>\n
FreeLibraryReview<\/a><\/p>\n
Alois Halbmayr and Gregor Maria Hoff:<\/p>\n
“Einen wichtigen Schritt auf dem Weg zu einer Geschichte der Negativen Theologie machen die beiden j\u00fcngst erschienenen, vorz\u00fcglich editierten und kommentierten Reader von Franke, William (Hg.), On What Cannot be Said. Appophatic Discourses in Philosophy, Religion, Literature and the Arts. Vol. I: Classic Formulations; Vol. II: Modern and Contemporary Transformations, Notre Dame 2007.\u00a0 Die Einleitungen lassen sich bereits als eine komprimierte Geschichte der Negativen Theologie lesen.”<\/p>\n
(The two superbly edited and commented volumes of the\u00a0recently published reader of William Franke\u00a0represent an\u00a0important step on the way to a history of Negative Theology. On What Cannot be Said. Appophatic Discourses in Philosophy, Religion, Literature and the Arts. Vol. I: Classic Formulations; Modern and Contemporary Transformations, Notre Dame 2007.\u00a0 The introductions\u00a0alone can be read as a compressed history of Negative Theology.)<\/p>\n
From Negative Theologie Heute? Zum aktuellen Stellenwert einer umstrittenen Tradiition, eds. Alois Halbmayr and Gregor Maria Hoff (Freiburg-Basel-Wien: Herder, 2008).\u00a0 Introduction, p. 10.<\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
“Lo scopo ambizioso e riuscito dell’antologia \u00e8 proprio quello di mostrare la ricchezza delle espressioni del discorso apofatico che si registra nell’intero arco della filosofia occidentale, da Platone a J.-L. Marion, non tralasciando il suo rilievo in ambito teologico e in quello letterario.”<\/p>\n
(The ambitious and achieved aim of the anthology is to demonstrate the richness of the expressions of apophatic discourse as registered in the entire arc of Western philosophy from Plato to J.-L. Marion; it does this, moreover, without neglecting the importance of apophatic discourse also in the fields of theology and literature.)<\/p>\n
–Andrea Aguti, <\/a>Humanitas<\/a> (2009)<\/p>\n
“For a comprehensive survey of the apophatic tradition from Plato to Derrida in all its aspects see the introduction and critical essays in William Franke’s impressive two-volume anthology, On What Cannot Be Said: Apophatic Discourses in Philosophy, Religion, Literature, and the Arts.”<\/p>\n
–Noam Reisner, Milton and the Ineffable (Oxford University Press, 2009), 8n<\/p>\n
Materialism, Mysticism, and Art blog<\/a><\/p>\n
Marilynne Robinson citation and comment<\/a> in COMMONWEAL<\/a>:<\/p>\n
\n
\n
March 09, 2012<\/p>\n
Article.\u00a0 Imagination & Community<\/h4>\n
What Holds Us Together<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Marilynne Robinson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Over the years I have collected so many books that, in aggregate, they can fairly be called a library. I don\u2019t know what percentage of them I have read. Increasingly I wonder how many of them I ever will read. This has done nothing to dampen my pleasure in acquiring more books. But it has caused me to ponder the meaning they have for me, and the fact that to me they epitomize one great aspect of the goodness of life. Recently I bought a book titled On What Cannot Be Said: Apophatic Discourses in Philosophy, Religion, Literature, and the Arts, Volume One: Classic Formulations<\/a>. The title itself is worth far more than the price of the book, and then there is the table of contents. So far I have read only the last and latest selection, from The Wandering Cherub by Silesius Angelus, who wrote in the seventeenth century.<\/p>\n
In the stack of magazines, read and unread, that I can never bring myself to throw away, there are any number of articles suggesting that science, too, explores the apophatic\u2014reality that eludes words\u2014dark matter, dark energy, the unexpressed dimensions proposed by string theory, the imponderable strangeness described by quantum theory. These magazine essays might be titled \u201cLearned Ignorance,\u201d or \u201cThe Cloud of Unknowing,\u201d or they might at least stand beside Plato\u2019s and Plotinus\u2019s demonstrations of the failures of language, which are, paradoxically, demonstrations of the extraordinary power of language to evoke a reality beyond its grasp, to evoke a sense of what cannot be said.<\/p>\n
I love all this for a number of reasons, one of them being that, as a writer, I continually attempt to make inroads on the vast terrain of what cannot be said\u2014or said by me, at least. I seem to know by intuition a great deal that I cannot find words for, and to enlarge the field of my intuition every time I fail again to find these words. That is to say, the unnamed is overwhelmingly present and real for me. And this is truer because the moment it stops being a standard for what I do say is the moment my language goes slack and my imagination disengages itself. I would almost say it is the moment in which my language becomes false. The frontiers of the unsayable, and the avenues of approach to those frontiers, have been opened for me by every book I have ever read that was in any degree ambitious, earnest, or imaginative; by every good teacher I have had; by music and painting; by conversation that was in any way interesting, even conversation overheard as it passed between strangers.<\/p>\n
Jeff L. Pool, Religious Studies Review 37 (March 2011): 41-42<\/a><\/p>\n
‘. . . this two-volume anthology powerfully develops a linguistic theory alongside the very texts that one needs to measure the theoretical claims themselves. Franke’s work genuinely, even if ironically, both serves as a catalyst to initiate dialogue about \u201cwhat cannot be said\u201d or about \u201cthe \u2018apophatic difference\u2019 of the sayable from the unsayable,\u201dand, perhaps most importantly for such ironic dialogue, increases possibilities for toleration of differences that remain \u201copen infinitely.\u201d’<\/p>\n
Jack L. Sammons review<\/a>:
\nThis is a terrific collection of what might be considered the essential documents of apophatic discourse. This volume contains modern and contemporary versions of writings about that which cannot be said. The introduction is excellent, although really it is more of an article on its own than an introduction, and each document is also very thoughtfully introduced, primarily by putting it in the overall context of the author’s work and giving a thought or two to how it relates to a central theme of negative theology. In fact, rather than entitling this “apophatic discourses, it might have been better to say that these are (mostly) secular discourses about negative theology for this, it seems to me, is the author’s true interest. In any case, the book is extremely useful for anyone thinking about that which cannot be said. There are surely quibbles — well, more than quibbles — along the way with the author’s take on the various pieces, and some of the choices are, well, clearly idiosyncratic and perhaps eve a little strange. This, however, is inevitable in a collection such as this that breaks new ground in creating a discipline. While already familiar with most of the pieces, I truly enjoyed the journey that this collection creates. It’s a lovely bit of work.<\/p>\n
Boston University Institute for Philosophy and Religion blog<\/a>
\n\u2013Ron Bernier writes:\u00a0 \u201cI found much to admire and think further on in Dr. Schweizer\u2019s talk, \u201cThe Poetry of Suffering and Waiting.\u201d \u00a0In particular I was struck by the consistency of the theme of the \u201csilence\u201d and \u201cindecipherability\u201d of sufferering \u2013 that the langauge of suffering, for both the afflicted in his\/her solitude in pain and the \u201cwaiting\u201d of he\/she\/we who attend on them is nameless or \u201cunsayable.\u201d \u00a0This put me in mind of the theology and philosophy of apophasis \u2013 a form of discouse that fundamentally consists of langage that negates itself in order to evoke that which is beyond words, beyond the limits of saying altogether. \u00a0\u201d\u2018Apophasis\u2019 reads etymologically,\u201d explains William Franke (professor of comparative literature and religious studies at Vanderbilt University; see his On What Cannot Be Said, Notre Dame, 2007), \u201cas \u2018away from speech\u2019 or \u2018saying away\u2019 (apo, \u2018from\u2019 or \u2018away from\u2019; phasis, \u2018assertion,\u2019 from phemi, \u2018assert\u2019 or \u2018say\u2019), and this points in the direction of unsaying and ultimately of silence\u201d (Franke, vol 1, 2).\u00a0 Apophasis is fostered by a notion fundamentally opposed to the central tenet of classical Greek philosophy of Being (or ontology) and its claims for autonomous human reason; it articulates, as it were, the utter inefficiency of the Logos to name ultimate reality. \u00a0This prompts me to think more about the very possibility of the apophatic body \u2013 that is, beyond a matter of the inadequacy of linguistic communication, to what extent can we, as waiting attendant to the sufferer, enter into another type of communication with the apophatic material body.<\/p>\n
Janice, McRandal, Christian Doctrine and the Grammar of Difference <\/em>(2015), pp. 151-54<\/a><\/p>\n
Dante’s \u00a0Interpretive Journey<\/a><\/h2>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n
University of Chicago Press<\/p>\n
Franke, William Dante’s Interpretive Journey. 261 p. 6 x 9 1996 Series: (RP) Religion and Postmodernism Series<\/p>\n
Dante\u2019s Interpretive Journey proposes a theory of the existential, theological structures of interpretation by which our lives in language are constructed.\u00a0 It brings the theological hermeneutics of Dante\u2019s poem into contact with modern philosophical hermeneutics as developed particularly by Heidegger and Gadamer.\u00a0 It explores a variety of theories of interpretation, medieval and modern, in an attempt to open original insights into the nature of interpretation, notably its existential ground and openness to transcendence in directions traditionally conceptualized in terms of religious revelation.<\/p>\n
Sample Pages<\/a>
\nIncomplete on-line version<\/a><\/p>\n
Short Description:<\/p>\n
Critically engaging the thought of Heidegger, Gadamer, and others, William Franke contributes both to the criticism of Dante’s Divine Comedy and to the theory of interpretation.<\/p>\n
Reading the poem through the lens of hermeneutical theory, Franke focuses particularly on Dante’s address to the reader as the site of a disclosure of truth. The event of the poem for its reader becomes potentially an experience of truth both human and divine. While contemporary criticism has concentrated on the historical character of Dante’s poem, often insisting on it as undermining the poem’s claims to transcendence, Franke argues that precisely the poem’s historicity forms the ground for its mediation of a religious revelation. Dante’s dramatization, on an epic scale, of the act of interpretation itself participates in the self-manifestation of the Word in poetic form.<\/p>\n
Dante’s Interpretive Journey is an indispensable addition to the field of Dante studies and offers rich insights for philosophy and theology as well.<\/p>\n
TABLE OF CONTENTS<\/p>\n
Preface<\/p>\n
Introduction: Truth and interpretation in the Divine Comedy
\n1: Historicity of Truth
\n2: Truth through Interpretation and the Hermeneutic of Faith
\n3: Interpretive Ontology: Dante and Heidegger<\/p>\n
Ch. 1: The Address to the Reader
\n1: The Ontological Import of the Address to the Reader
\n2: Reader’s Address as Scene of the Production of Sense
\n3: Truth, Sendings, Being-Addressed: Deconstruction versus Hermeneutics or Dialogue with Derrida?
\n4: A Philological Debate: Auerbach and Spitzer
\n5: Petrarch, Boccaccio, and the Fiction of Philology<\/p>\n
Ch. 2: Dante’s Hermeneutic Rite of Passage: Inferno IX
\n1: Blockage
\n2: Passage
\n3: Ambiguities
\n4: Appendix: Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and the Meaning of a Modern Understanding of Dante<\/p>\n
Ch. 3: The Temporality of Conversion
\n1: Interpretation as Ontological Repetition and Dante’s Fatedness
\n2: Ecstatic and Repetitive Temporality
\n3: Phenomenology of Fear\/Anxiety in Inferno I
\n4: Dantesque Allegory and the Act of Understanding<\/p>\n
Ch. 4: The Making of History
\n1: Relocating Truth: From Historical Sense to Reader’s Historicity
\n2: Reality and Realism in Purgatorio X
\n3: Some History (and a Reopening) of the Question of the Truth of the Commedia<\/p>\n
Ch. 5: Resurrected Tradition and Revealed Truth
\n1: Dante’s Statius
\n2: Hermeneutics, Historicity, and Suprahistorical Truth<\/p>\n
Recapitulatory Prospectus: A New Hermeneutic Horizon for Religious Revelation in Poetic Literature?<\/p>\n
Core Bibliography of Recurrently Cited Sources
\nIndex<\/p>\n
Sample Pages<\/a>
\nGoogle on-line version<\/a><\/p>\n
REVIEWS<\/p>\n
\u201c. . . these may very well be some of the most important pages written on Dante in the last decade, if not the last half century.\u00a0 As Franke undertakes his rigorous theoretical definition and exploration of the terms that will continue to preoccupy him throughout his book, the reader is privileged to follow, from sentence to sentence, the workings of an outstanding philosophical intellect applying itself, at the highest level, to a text that eminently deserves but rarely receives such treatment. The case for Dante\u2019s simultaneous historicity and contemporaneity, for what Franke calls \u2018the synergism between interpretation theory and Dante\u2019s interpretive practice\u2019 (p. 4), is made here with a force and a precision that raise it to the level of genuine eloquence. . . . The introduction\u2014like the rest of the book\u2014should be read and pondered by anyone who cares about Dante, or poetry, or history, or theology, or interpretation, or truth, or, quite simply (and in the philosophical dialect dear to Franke), our human being-in-the-world.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014Steven Botterill (editor-in-chief of Dante Studies), Comparative Literature vol. 50, No. 2 (Spring, 1998), p. 179
\nReviewed by:<\/p>\n
James Torrens, Christianity and LIterature 45.3\/4, Spring\/Summer\u00a0(1996): 416-18\u00a0 online review<\/a> pdf<\/a><\/p>\n
Claire Honess, The European Legacy <\/em>3\/1 (1998): 153-154<\/a><\/p>\n
Steven Botterill<\/a>, Comparative Literature 50\/2 (1998): 178-81\u00a0 online review<\/a><\/p>\n
Giuseppe Cavatorta, Lectura Dantis 20-21 (1997): 103-106<\/a><\/p>\n
Stanley Benfell<\/a>, Religion and Literature 31\/2 (1999): 87-93<\/p>\n
Joseph Luzzi, Italica 74\/3 (1997): 412-13<\/p>\n
Brian Horne, Literature and Theology 11\/1 (1997)<\/a><\/p>\n
Edward Donald Kennedy, The Comparatist 22 (1998): 204-05<\/p>\n
Stephanie Paulsell, Religious Studies Review 24\/3 (1998)<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Mazzocco, Rivista di studi italiani 16\/2 (1998): 554-555<\/a><\/p>\n
Mazzocco review<\/a><\/p>\n
Manfred Lenzen, Deutsches Dante-Jahrbuch 73 (1998): 214-15<\/p>\n
John Dally, Journal of Religion 79\/2 (1999)<\/p>\n
John A. Scott, The Modern Language Review, April 1, 1999<\/p>\n
Ronald L. Martinez, Speculum January 1999<\/p>\n
Paolucci, Choice<\/p>\n
Marcellina Troncarelli, Letteratura Italiana Antica 4 (2003): 524-26<\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
Unpublished reviews by:<\/p>\n
Giuseppe Mazzotta\u00a0 (see, however, Speculum, Vol. 74, No. 1 (Jan., 1999), pp. 187-189 <\/a><\/p>\n
Donald Marshall<\/p>\n
Thomas Altizer<\/p>\n
David Wood<\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
Cited and\/or discussed in:<\/p>\n
Dante: Da Firenze all\u2019aldil\u00e0 (Atti del terzo Seminario dantesco internazionale, Firenze, 9-11 giugno 2000),ed, Michelangelo Picone (Florence: Cesati, 2001), p. 76\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 (My Italian interventions: \u00a0pp. 121, 280)<\/p>\n
Jennifer Margaret Frazer, Rite of Passage in the Narratives of Dante and Joyce (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002)<\/p>\n
John Took, Dante\u2019s Phenomenology of Being (Glasgow: University of Glasgow Press, 2000)<\/p>\n
Guy Raffa, Divine Dialectic: Dante’s Incarnational Poetics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000)<\/p>\n
\n
Amilcare Iannucci,\u00a0 \u201cAlready and Not Yet: Dante\u2019s Existential Eschatology,\u201din Dante for the New Millennium, ed. Teodolinda Barolini and H. Wayne Storey (Fordham University Press, 2003),\u00a0\u00a0p. 438.<\/p>\n
Giuseppe Ledda,\u00a0La guerra della lingua: Ineffabilit\u00e0, retorica e narrative nella Commedia di Dante (Ravenna: Longo, 2002)<\/p>\n
Christine O’Connel Bauer, Dante’s Hermeneutics of Salvation: Passages to Freedom in the Divine Comedy
\n(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007)<\/p>\n
Rewriting Virgil in the Commedia<\/a><\/p>\n
Daniel J. Pinti<\/a><\/p>\n
Christian Moevs<\/a><\/p>\n
Christian Moevs, The Metaphysics of Dante’s Comedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)<\/p>\n
James Miller, Dante and the Unorthodox: The Aesthetics of Transgression (Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2005), pp. 423-24<\/p>\n
Sherry Roush, Herme’s Lyre: Italian Poetic Self-Commentary from Dante to Tommaso Campanella (2002)<\/p>\n
T. A. Hipolito, “Ancient and Modern in Dante’s Vita Nuova,” Renasence (Winter 2003), p. 16<\/p>\n
Else Jongeneel, “Art and Divine Order in the Divina Commedia,” Literature and Theology (2007)<\/p>\n
Gregory B. Stone, Dante’s Pluralism and the Islamic Philosophy of Religion (New York: Palgrave, 2007), p. 285.<\/p>\n
David Gibbons, Metaphor in Dante (Oxford: Legenda, 2002)<\/p>\n
John Took, Dante’s Phenomenology of Being (Glasgow: University of Glasgow Press, 2000)<\/p>\n
Winthrop Wetherbee,\u00a0The Ancient Flame:\u00a0Dante and the Poets (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 2008)<\/p>\n
Jeremiah Alberg, A Reinterpretation of Rousseau: A Religious System, Forward by Ren\u00e9 Girard (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007)
\n_____________, Beneath the Veil of the Strange Verses: Reading Scandalous Texts (East\u00a0Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2012)<\/p>\n
Raffaele de Benedictis, Worldly Wise: The Semiotics of Discourse in Dante’s Commedia (New York:\u00a0Peter Lang, 2011), pp.<\/p>\n
Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle,\u00a0 “Closure in Paradise: Dante Outsings Aquinas,” MLN 115, no. 1 (2001): 1-12.
\n[‘For the ontological import of the address to the reader, see William Franke, \u201cDante’s Intepretive Journey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 37-81. He specifically and correctly notes Dante’s opposition to Aquinas’s denial of “ontological efficacy and depth to poetic language,” p. 58.’]<\/p>\n
Susan Schibanoff, Chaucer’s Queer Poetics: Rereading the Dream Trio (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006)<\/p>\n
“All this of course has been much debated by scholars, most interestingly I think by William Franke (1996), who weaves it into his brilliant Heideggerian reading of Dante as a whole.”\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 — David M. Black, “Dante’s ‘Two Suns’: Reflections on the Psychological Sources of the Divine Comedy<\/em>,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis<\/em> <\/strong>98:6, pp 1619-1717, December 2017, available online: <\/em><\/strong>http:\/\/www.tandfonline.com\/<\/em><\/strong><\/a>[Article DOI].<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
Transcendence, Immanence, and Intercultural Philosophy, eds. Nahum Brown and William Franke<\/a><\/h2>\n
Google Books sample pages<\/a><\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Books by William Franke (Click on titles or covers for detailed information and reviews) Pandemics and Apocalypse in World Literature: The Hope for Planetary Salvation\u00a0(Routledge 2025) Publishers Website for Pandemics and Apocalypse in World Literature William Franke delves into how disease and death force humanity to confront its deepest vulnerabilities in this profound exploration of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2442,"featured_media":2187,"parent":3,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-228","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/williamfranke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/williamfranke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/williamfranke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/williamfranke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2442"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/williamfranke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228"}],"version-history":[{"count":417,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/williamfranke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4300,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/williamfranke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/228\/revisions\/4300"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/williamfranke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/williamfranke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/williamfranke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/williamfranke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}