Religious narrative and the literary fantastic: ambiguity and uncertainty in Ex. 1–18

Abstract

This paper presents a perspective for the analysis of the literary form of myth drawn from literary-critical theories of the fantastic and fantasy. The aim is to demonstrate the value of such analyses for understanding what a religious narrative is and what it does – as an addition to existing approaches (phenomenological, historical, structuralist, formalist, and so on.) To achieve this aim, the paper presents a fantasy-theoretical case study of the Exodus narrative from the Hebrew Bible (Ex. 1–18). The analysis shows that this narrative of the fantastic events at Israel's exodus from Egypt confounds distinctions (natural/supernatural, benign/malign, self/other, hope/horror), generates varied reactions in the personae, foregrounds the uncertainty and ambiguity of the events, and points to its own artifice. The literary strategies are shown to have effects that are apt to unsettle, disturb and fascinate; effects that are both semantic and affective, mobilising the recipients in the interpretation of the status, veracity and meaning of the fantastic events. Proposals are then made about the literary fantastic as a fruitful analytical perspective specifically for narratives about metamorphoses and miracles, and about incorporating destabilisation, uncertainty and ambiguity more strongly into theories of what a religious narrative is and does in the study of religion.

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