Abstract

The correlation of narrative and ethics has a long history in literature, and frequently ethics has been associated with a transcendental notion of truth. The recent attention to narrative and theology has offered more theoretical reflections of both poetic and hermeneutical practices that return us to the earliest literary, philosophical and theological productions. In this essay, I wish to present a different way of examining the correlation of narrative and ethics; one less orientated towards Scripture and less concerned with the Church. The narratives I consider are secular fictions from the modernist period. Through examining these works phenomenologically and the role the imagination plays in the production of beliefs, I argue that all narratives structure emotions, desires and hopes and this structuring continually opens up a transcendent horizon.

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