Between Three Worlds: Spiritual Travelers in the Western Literary Tradition

by John Stephens

Publisher:

Wipf and Stock

, 2023

This book explores the motif of the spiritual journey and its evolution in Western literature. A spiritual journey can be broadly defined as a search for the divine. Such a search can occur either internally as a psychological process or in some cases may involve an actual geographic journey. Spiritual journeys can be conducted by individuals or groups. In exploring this topic, various kinds of texts will be reviewed, including autobiographies, novels, and short stories, as well as myths, folktales, and mystical writings. The book classifies spiritual journey narratives into four categories: theological journeys, mystical journeys, mythopoetic journeys and allegorical journeys. Representative texts have been selected in the history of Western religious literature that illustrate the basic features of each of these four categories.

Praise for Between Three Worlds

“John Stephens is a veteran scholar of collective approaches to the divine in different places and periods. Here, he gives an engaging and readable account of individual approaches to the divine in selected texts from the western literary canon, by authors such as Augustine, Dante, Margery Kemp, Kafka, and C. S. Lewis. Stephens balances capacious overview and focused analysis to help the reader explore how spiritually minded individuals experienced and recorded their quest for the highest good.”

—F. Regina Psaki, professor emerita of romance languages, University of Oregon

Product Details

• Title: Between Three Worlds: Spiritual Travelers in the Western Literary Tradition
• Author: John Stephens
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Print Publication Date: 2023
• Logos Release Date: 2023
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Ebook
• ISBNs: 9781666758757, 9781666758740, 1666758744, 9781666758733, 1666758736, 1666758752
• Resource ID: LLS:9781666758757
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2023-02-19T10:57:58Z

About John Stephens

John Richard Stephens began writing books in 1987. Prior to becoming an author, he held a wide variety of occupations ranging from work as a psychiatric counselor in two hospitals to being an intelligence officer and squadron commander in the U.S. Air Force. John has had twenty-one books published so far, including Wildest Lives of the Wild West: America through the Words of Wild Bill Hickok, Billy the Kid, and Other Famous Westerners, Gold: First-Hand Accounts from the Rush that Shaped the West (both by TwoDot), Commanding the Storm (Lyons Press), Weird History 101, and Wyatt Earp Speaks.