A Biblical Text and its Afterlives : The Survival of Jonah in Western Culture (Hardcover)

Introduction; 1. The Mainstream; (i) Jonah and the Fathers: Jonah and Jesus as typological twins; (ii) Jonah the Jew: the evolution of a biblical character; (iii) Divine Disciplinary Devices: or the book of Jonah and a tractate on producing docile disciple-bodies; (iv) Cataloguing the Monstrous: Jonah and the Cani Cacharis (or a concluding scientific postscript); (v) Taking Stock: survivals, hauntings, Jonah and (Stanley) fish, and the Christian colonisation of the book of Jonah; 2. Backwaters and Underbellies; (i) Jewish Interpretation; (ii) Popular Interpretation; (iii) On the Strained Relations Between the Backwaters and the Mainstream: or how Jewish and popular readings are prone to bring on a bout of scholarly dyspepsia; (iv) Of Survival, Memes and Life-After-Death: on Jonah's infinite regurgitation and endless survival; (v) Jonah on the Oncology Ward and the Beached-up Whale Carcass; or the strange secular afterlives of Biblical texts; 3. Regurgitating Jonah; (i) Of 'Hot Chestnuts', 'Fluid Puddings' and 'Plots That Do Not Shelter Us': some ruminations on the salvific properties of 'the Bible' and 'literature'; (ii) Regurgitating Jonah; (iii) In conclusion … Recuperating Jonah: the book of Jonah as the quintessential story and the most typical of Bible texts; Bibliography.