The other day, I stumbled across a wonderful live recording of Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat (The Soldier’s Tale), a small theater piece he wrote with the Swiss novelist Charles Ferdinand Ramuz at the end of World War I. I was suddenly flooded with memories of the elaborately . . . . Continue Reading »
To tell dark stories at Christmas is to acknowledge the reality of the encompassing darkness into which the light of Christ is born. Continue Reading »
Tyll: A Novel by daniel kehlmann, translated by ross benjamin pantheon, 352 pages, $26.95 Daniel Kehlmann’s novel Tyll, like its title character, is full of dark surprises. Tyll Ulenspiegel, a legendary figure from German folklore, is a prankster, magician, and traveling performer. Throughout . . . . Continue Reading »
They don’t look very Christian—those strange faces made of leaves, and those women displaying cartoonishly enlarged genitals on the walls of medieval churches. Most people who have explored the medieval architecture of Western Europe have heard a tour guide explain that a particular carving . . . . Continue Reading »
In a collection of essays entitled The Sanctified Church, Zora Neale Hurston described the traditions of the African American holiness and Pentecostal churches as a “revitalizing element” in black music and religion. As someone deeply invested in African American folk culture, . . . . Continue Reading »
The issue of populism in the Evangelical ethos raises a concern for the need to differentiate between pop culture as folk culture and pop culture as mass culture. At its best, Evangelicalism seeks to preserve and foster folk culture and the critics of Evangelical piety need to recognize this . . . . Continue Reading »
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