Several further book projects exist in manuscript form as works-in-progress. Certain parts of each have appeared already in periodical literature.\u00a0 Five further books in particular are part of the overall design of a poetics of revelation and a philosophy of the humanities worked out in continual dialogue with a variety of theoretical paradigms\u00a0among those most\u00a0influential on the critical scene today.<\/p>\n
First, there is another book on Dante, the sequel to\u00a0Dante\u2019s Interpretive Journey<\/em>, which turned out to be based on interpretation of passages primarily from theInferno<\/em> and the\u00a0Purgatorio<\/em>.\u00a0 The hermeneutic paradigm developed in that book works in the most straightforward way in these segments of the poem.\u00a0 For theParadiso<\/em> a substantially different theoretical\u00a0paradigm is called for because Dante runs up against the limits of language and interpretation.\u00a0 He experiences the break-down of interpretation and ventures into the “beyond” of language.\u00a0 The topos of “ineffability” and a negative theology and corresponding negative poetics, decisively qualifying and delimiting the poetics of revelation, become key to an adequate theoretical enframing of this culminating portion of the\u00a0Divine Comedy<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0Accordingly, my central\u00a0work on Dante (apart from other ad hoc contributions) is still in progress and will be complete only with this volume.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n One of the deepest roots of our thinking and of all theoretical speculation is to be discovered in the rhetorical tradition. \u00a0To the extent that we are always thinking with and within language, the concepts and analyses of rhetoric\u2014both the art and science of using language effectively\u2014open up essential insights into the enabling and limiting conditions of our thought in every field of inquiry.\u00a0 The very substance of knowledge cannot be severed from its linguistic means and medium, which it is the province of rhetoric to systematically study and exploit.<\/p>\n The key unifying aspect of the approach taken in this work is the endeavor to think figurative language in a dimension of infinity–as uncircumscribed by any non-figurative substrate.\u00a0 The absolute reality of language becomes revelatory of reality as such in its absoluteness.\u00a0 The treatment is thereby marked as ultimately theological in inspiration.\u00a0 A poetics of revelation and specifically the\u00a0Divine Comedy<\/em> as a theological revelation in and through poetic form has been a major interest developing alongside and sometimes cross-fertilizing this project.\u00a0 Even if only indirectly, this essay adumbrates a theology of poetic language thought from the ground of rhetorical tradition.\u00a0 My purpose\u00a0i<\/strong>s not to define these commonest of concepts yet again, but to explore the vistas they can open up in certain theoretical humanities disciplines, particularly poetics, philosophy, and theology.\u00a0 The question at the core of the present inquiry is that of language as a revelation of being.\u00a0 Rhetoric here opens upon metaphysics. How does metaphor account for the unity of our experience?\u00a0 The riddles of metaphysics and the ultimate questions asked by religions, far from being solved, nevertheless become more lucid and meaningful when placed in this perspective of metaphor.\u00a0 My aim is to explore just how far rhetorical consciousness of the metaphorical medium of all our thought can illuminate perennial metaphysical and theological conundrums and our very way of experiencing and articulating the elusive meanings for which we live and act.<\/p>\n This work brings out the theological underpinnings of major texts in the critical theory canon.\u00a0 It shows\u00a0how\u00a0their typically\u00a0secularist assumptions tend to be deconstructed by the\u00a0theological paradigms that\u00a0they deploy, whether deliberately or implicitly\u00a0and unconsiously.\u00a0 The key insights\u00a0of postmodern theory, from the diacritical nature of the sign onwards, are opened thereby\u00a0to being illuminated through the lens of a post-secular apophatic theology.\u00a0\u00a0I\u00a0advocate this type of theology as a salutary, not to say salvific or redemptive,\u00a0contribution of postmodernism to contemporary culture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Several further book projects exist in manuscript form as works-in-progress. Certain parts of each have appeared already in periodical literature.\u00a0 Five further books in particular are part of the overall design of a poetics of revelation and a philosophy of the humanities worked out in continual dialogue with a variety of theoretical paradigms\u00a0among those most\u00a0influential…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2442,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"class_list":["post-333","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/williamfranke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/333","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=333"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/williamfranke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1454,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/williamfranke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/333\/revisions\/1454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/williamfranke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/williamfranke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}[Infinite Figures: Proposals for a New Theoretical Rhetoric]<\/h2>\n
[Postmodern Theologics: Critical Theory in the Wake of the Death of God]<\/h2>\n