Ellen Aasland Reinertsen

Props in the Parable Plots? The Significance of Intersectional Female Characters in Attested and Possible Parable Reception

AbstractEllen Aasland Reinertsen. Portrettoto

How can an intersectional blending approach to parables with female characters in texts and reception show these parables’ interpretational potential beyond the state of contemporary scholarship? This study aims to shed light on how parables with intersectional female characters have been interpreted and how ancient listeners who mirrored these characters might possibly have interpreted them.

To study this, I place intersectional female parable characters at the centre of these investigations and study their reception. Since I believe contemporary research and earlier parable interpretations are influential voices in church and cultural discourses about meaning and significance, I have examined written interpretations of parables with intersectional female characters in contemporary research, in Luther’s writings, and by theologians in Antiquity.

To do so, I combine Intersectionality and Conceptual Blending Theory into an applied Intersectional Blending method. In addition, imagination as an historical tool, polyphony and cognitive approaches to the study literary characters are valuable in these investigations.

In contrast to most current reception research, I will not only examine what I call attested reception, meaning those interpretations that are preserved and to which we have access, but in order to find new and broader interpretational potential in these parables, I will also investigate possible reception by what I call reflecting recipients, who would hear about corresponding parable characters.

I study this because especially mainstream scholarship tends to ignore or underrate female parable characters or interpret them in stereotypical, gender-biased ways, the broader feminist scholarship lacks a focus on parables and that an intersectional perspective generally is missing in parable studies. In addition, how parable scholarship and other influential voices interpret parable characters has implications for the extent to which real intersectionally varied recipients may see themselves as represented or reflected in contemporary parable interpretations.

Contact information

 

Supervisor

Professor Marianne Bjelland Kartzow.

Financing

 

Published Feb. 9, 2018 12:40 PM - Last modified May 12, 2023 9:43 AM