Overview
- Winner of the 2020 Hispanic Theological Initiative (HTI) Book Prize
- Uses methodologies of literary criticism and history
- Utilizes Gloria Anzaldúa's theories as a guide
- Illustrates how space and identity can only be determined in conjunction with one another
Part of the book series: Religion and Spatial Studies (RSS)
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Table of contents (6 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
In this book, Peter Anthony Mena looks closely at descriptions of space in ancient Christian hagiographies and considers how the desert relates to constructions of subjectivity. By reading three pivotal ancient hagiographies—the Life of Antony, the Life of Paul the Hermit, and the Life of Mary of Egypt—in conjunction with Gloria Anzaldúa’s ideas about the US/Mexican borderlands/la frontera, Mena shows readers how descriptions of the desert in these texts are replete with spaces and inhabitants that render the desert a borderland or frontier space in Anzaldúan terms. As a borderland space, the desert functions as a device for the creation of an emerging identity in late antiquity—the desert ascetic. Simultaneously, the space of the desert is created through the image of the saint. Literary critical, religious studies, and historical methodologies converge in this work in order to illuminate a heuristic tool for interpreting the desertin late antiquity and its importance for the development of desert asceticism. Anzaldúa’s theories help guide a reading especially attuned to the important relationship between space and subjectivity.
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Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Place and Identity in the Lives of Antony, Paul, and Mary of Egypt
Book Subtitle: Desert as Borderland
Authors: Peter Anthony Mena
Series Title: Religion and Spatial Studies
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17328-9
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Religion and Philosophy, Philosophy and Religion (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-17327-2Published: 08 May 2019
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-17328-9Published: 24 April 2019
Series ISSN: 2945-6371
Series E-ISSN: 2945-638X
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XV, 123
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Biblical Studies, Postcolonial/World Literature, History of the Middle East, Middle Eastern Literature