Chair and Professor of English Justin Jackson spoke on the imagery of Christ in literature. | Courtesy of Hillsdale College
Students should not force images of Christ onto literature, said Professor of English Justin Jackson in a lecture at the Hillsdale Thomistic Institute conference on “Christology in Literature” April 22.
“The simple answer is ‘respect literature, please’ — don’t do violence to it,” Jackson said. “Just because you want it to be a certain way, does not mean that it has to be that certain way.”
The conference, co-sponsored by the Catholic Society, featured Jackson and two guest speakers: Michael Mack, associate professor of English at the Catholic University of America, and Thomas Pfau, professor of English at Duke University. Mack spoke on “Sidney Shakespeare, and the Imago Dei,” and Pfau spoke on “Conversion and Annunciation in Paul Claudel’s ‘Magnificat.’”
“The goal of this conference was to help all of those who attended to see how they could treat literature in a serious way that respected the literature itself, while also seeing where Christ becomes present in literature,” said senior Colton Duncan, who helped organize the conference.
In the opening lecture, Jackson analyzed Christological imagery — metaphors that depict or allude to Christ — in works by Ovid, Nietzsche, Julian of Norwich, Dostoyevsky, and others. Jackson also pointed to images of Christ in the Narnia and Star Wars movies.
Jackson said the Clint Eastwood movie “Gran Torino” made its Christ figure too obvious.
“By the end, Walt Kowalski is on the ground with his arms out,” Jackson said of a crucifixion reference at the end of the film. “If you look very closely, you can see Clint Eastwood literally beating a dead horse.”
While students often see Christological imagery in works by English poet William Blake, Jackson said Blake’s view of Jesus does not align with general Christian belief.
“They’ll come to me and say ‘this is beautiful — look at how he’s portraying Christ’ and I have to tell them ‘his Jesus is not your Jesus,’” Jackson said. “First, his Jesus is a man born mortal, because when Mary was betrothed to Joseph, the Holy Spirit came to her with a sense of free love, and she went and slept with somebody else. She had baby Jesus, and Joseph is the saint in Blake’s world because he forgave her. Do you see what I’m getting at now?”
Mack said Phillip Sidney, the poet he discussed in his lecture, would have concurred with Jackson’s approach to literature.
“Treat literary works as literary works,” Mack said. “That was Sidney’s position as an inventor of literary works. He engaged in a program that, yes, had ambitions beyond literary aims. Every time I teach a work, there’s always some contingent of people who want to know what the moral is, or what’s the takeaway. I don’t think Sidney was reductive enough to give us a moral or religious or spiritual takeaway.”
The speakers participated in a roundtable after the lectures.
All three speakers recommended students see “Waiting for Godot,” an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett. Pfau said modern audience reactions to the play signal a descent into moral relativism.
“If you see the play in the theater, pay close attention to where the audience laughs,” Pfau said. “From what perspective does an audience today experience Beckett? If the audience has a strong, robust foundation in theology, I think Beckett can be a very productive experience. But if it is a theologically illiterate or subliterate audience, they will actually take away the wrong things.”
Duncan said the Thomistic Institute was considering a conference on the Church fathers even before the success of the Christology in literature conference.
“I thought it was a very cohesive conference,” Duncan said. “I thought all of the talks covered various topics that all were different from each other but also complemented each other very well. I’m very happy with how the conference turned out.”
