A licensed mental health therapist and ordained United Methodist minister, the author reveals how he was delivered from the deepest depths of despair and hopelessness to a sense of freedom and peace through God's grace and forgiveness.

Simone Weil's supernaturalist interpretations of tragedy challenge not only the philosophical skepticism but also the religious rationalism characteristic of the modern age. This book boldly points out a supernaturalist alternative to contemporary, post-structuralist literary theory. This study of classical tragic drama offers a sacralizing impetus to secular discussions of literature. The book's Platonic premises and its grounding in the transcendental outlook of the religious traditions furnish a sacred illumination. Religious mystery and the cross of Christ both overshadow and deepen philosophical approaches to literary criticism, including theories of tragedy. Simone Weil's conception of tragic art, rooted in a mystical Christian metaphysics, offers original insight into the nature of tragedy. In contradiction of the prevailing secular outlook, Weil regards classical tragedy as a sacred art form. Tragic masterpieces evoke not the chaotic or irrational, as modernist interpreters hold, but rather a good which is absolute

Redemption: A Journey from Tragedy to Triumph, An intense drama based on a true story about a young woman’s journey to overcome the shame and guilt of a ruthless sexual assault. With quick thinking she was able to fool her assailant and survive the attack only to endure a long three-year battle to bring her assailant to justice. She embraced the love and support from her family but was very emotionally scarred as a result of her attack. This story is how she gained courage and strength through this tragedy and how she found her purpose through the pain.

Robert R. Williams offers a bold new account of divergences and convergences in the work of Hegel and Nietzsche. He explores four themes - the philosophy of tragedy; recognition and community; critique of Kant; and the death of God - and explicates both thinkers' critiques of traditional theology and metaphysics.

This extraordinary investigation of the death of the author's grandson yields a powerful memoir of addiction, grief, and the stories we choose to tell our families and ourselves. Jared Kindred left his home and family at the age of eighteen, choosing to wander across America on freight train cars and live on the street. Addicted to alcohol most of his short life, and withholding the truth from many who loved him, he never found a way to survive. Through this ordeal, Dave Kindred's love for his grandson has never wavered. Leave Out the Tragic Parts is not merely a reflection on love and addiction and loss. It is a hard-won work of reportage, meticulously reconstructing the life Jared chose for himself--a life that rejected the comforts of civilization in favor of a chance to roam free. Kindred asks painful but important questions about the lies we tell to get along, and what binds families together or allows them to fracture. Jared's story ended in tragedy, but the act of telling it is an act of healing and redemption. This is an important book on how to love your family, from a great writer who has lived its lessons.

To Samuel Taylor Coleridge, tragedy was not solely a literary mode, but a philosophy to interpret the history that unfolded around him. Tragic Coleridge explores the tragic vision of existence that Coleridge derived from Classical drama, Shakespeare, Milton and contemporary German thought. Coleridge viewed the hardships of the Romantic period, like the catastrophes of Greek tragedy, as stages in a process of humanity’s overall purification. Offering new readings of canonical poems, as well as neglected plays and critical works, Chris Murray elaborates Coleridge’s tragic vision in relation to a range of thinkers, from Plato and Aristotle to George Steiner and Raymond Williams. He draws comparisons with the works of Blake, the Shelleys, and Keats to explore the factors that shaped Coleridge’s conception of tragedy, including the origins of sacrifice, developments in Classical scholarship, theories of inspiration and the author’s quest for civic status. With cycles of catastrophe and catharsis everywhere in his works, Coleridge depicted the world as a site of tragic purgation, and wrote himself into it as an embattled sage qualified to mediate the vicissitudes of his age.

The goal of this book is to define and explain the archetypal pattern of redemption that underlies our whole notion of resolution in literature and to demonstrate, through multiple examples, that successful literature--poems and stories that have shown endurance or popularity--uses this pattern in specific ways. This theory should help readers to interpret both particular works of literature and the general notion of literature. The pattern of redemption employed here, in its ideal form, involves the sacrifice of an innocent redeemer to save something that has been lost. Because this pattern of redemption is typically associated with Christianity, this book can be taken as proposing a Christian theory of criticism. Current textbooks on literary criticism and theory cover a range of perspectives, such as Marxism, feminism, multiculturalism, reader response, and queer theory, but they invariably ignore the field of Christian criticism. Therefore, this book may be most useful as a supplementary text for courses in literary criticism that might include a Christian perspective. At the same time, however, the terms and methodology proposed here are not exclusive to or dependant on Christian beliefs, so readers of all types may find this approach useful. The greatest strength of this book is its application of the theory to numerous examples from a wide range of genres and periods of literature, testing the theory on classical and Shakespearean works such as the Iliad and Odyssey, Hamlet and Coriolanus; best sellers such as The Lord of the Rings, Le Petit Prince, Valley of the Dolls, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; horror stories such as Frankenstein; postcolonial novels such as Things Fall Apart and The Kite Runner; and lyric poems. Consequently, even readers who are skeptical of the assumptions used here should find the many concrete examples thought-provoking.

After discussing the "arts of redemption" and their rivals, and introducing soteriology, the theology of salvation, Patrick Sherry argues that the Christian "Drama of Redemption" has three Acts. The next five chapters discuss the three Acts, namely salvation history, our present human life, and the life to come. In each case, Sherry explains how art and literature can lead to an understanding of what is at stake here. His main concern is with the present life: hence three of those chapters deal with that phase of redemption, one of them specifically with "novels of redemption." The last substantial chapter of the book takes up the general issue of how art and literature contribute to religious understanding: Sherry argues that they may be primary expressions of religious belief, as well as "illustrations," and that as such they may criticise or complement theology, or in turn be open to criticism themselves from that quarter. Finally, he summarises the main theme and briefly discusses some of the particular problems of assessing the arts of redemption.The book's most distinctive feature is the way in which it uses art and literature as a means of religious and theological understanding. It is not a survey of the arts of redemption, though it uses a wide variety of examples, including ancient Greek drama, Flemish and Italian painting, religious music, and 19th -20th century novels. These examples are used as a tool for understanding what is one of the most difficult areas of theology.

The Tragic Odes of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead is a multifaceted study of tragedy in the group’s live performances showing how Garcia brought about catharsis through dance by leading songs of grief, mortality, and ironic fate in a collective theatrical context. This musical, literary, and historical analysis of thirty-five songs with tragic dimensions performed by Garcia in concert with the Grateful Dead illustrates the syncretic approach and acute editorial ear he applied in adapting songs of Robert Hunter, Bob Dylan, and folk tradition. Tragically ironic situations in which Garcia found himself when performing these songs are revealed, including those related to his opiate addiction and final decline. This book examines Garcia’s musical craftsmanship and the Grateful Dead’s collective art in terms of the mystery-rites of ancient Greece, Friedrich Nietzsche’s Dionysus, 20th century American music rooted in New Orleans, Hermann Hesse’s Magic Theater, and the Greek Theatre at Berkeley, offering a clear prospect on an often misunderstood phenomenon. Featuring interdisciplinary analysis, close attention to musical and poetic strategies, and historical and critical contexts, this book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of Popular Music, Musicology, Cultural Studies, and American Studies, as well as to the Grateful Dead’s avid listeners.

Where did her Father get his choice of a name? Everyone just assumed it was because he loved operas and named her after the Spanish gypsy in "Carmen." As she matured into a stunningly beautiful young girl with an olive complexion, dark hair and dark eyes, she resembled more of the Hispanic race than her Caucasian ancestry. Her lack of identity in early childhood combined with the rejection and abuse from her family of origin, led Carmyn to believe that the "y" in her name was the beginning of her feeling like a misplaced "why" in life. After a failed suicide attempt at age thirteen, Carmyn sought to find the answers to the untold many "whys" in her life. A dramatic conclusion weaves the past with the present and shines with the compelling truth and hope that only God can bring light out of darkness. Her redemption is found veiled in the symbolism of roses, the love of an unforgettable caretaker named Rosetta, and a divine revelation from God that ultimately transforms her tragedies into triumphs.