"This book provides a fresh and readable account of the literary and the religious. Drawing on the work of David Tracy, John Neary presents two ways of imagining the human relationship with the divine: the analogical and the dialectical.

After an introductory look at the way in which the Christian theological tradition presents these modes, Neary examines them and their complicated relationships within the works of two seminal modernist fiction writers, Joseph Conrad and James Joyce; a trio of Christian literary critics, Nathan Scott, William Lynch, and Cesareo Bandera; and several contemporary novelists who exemplify both traditional and postmodernist narrative forms, Anne Tyler, Muriel Spark, Thomas Pynchon, and D. M. Thomas.

Neary argues that each type of imagination, analogical and dialectical, is the other's supplement, they need each other to create a vision that is sharp, rich, and whole."--BOOK JACKET.