In and Outside the Whale: Reading Jonah as/and Literature.

Join the Department of Religious Studies for talk with Dr. L. Juliana Claassens, faculty of theology at Stellenbosch University. 

The myriad ways in which the book of Jonah has found expression in art, music, and literature indicates just how deeply ingrained Jonah has become in the Western consciousness. This lecture proposes that the book of Jonah can be read as literature as the narrative representation of traumatic experience in the form of literary symbols served as a way for the original readers to work through their trauma. Future interpretative communities connected to Jonah as well in terms of a shared experience of trauma as contemporary authors, artists, and poets sought to understand their situation within the contours of the words and images found in Jonah. These interpretations that highlight Jonah and Literature help us connect with experiences of suffering across time and space, even while recognizing that each traumatic experience is unique to a particular community.