Description
This is a consideration of the modern Superhero comic as an expression of spiritual desire, showing what Superheroes can teach about our most essential human needs. Ben Saunders shows that Superhero comics address deep emotional needs. From their earliest days, Superheroes have engaged with some of the most profound spiritual questions that a human being can face: What does it mean to be good? Why is there evil? Why can't I have what I want? How should I live, knowing that I must die? The book suggests these fantasies of power and romance are attempts to wrestle and negotiate with some fundamentally spiritual issues: the problem of evil, the inescapability of human imperfection, and the stark fact of mortality. Saunders argues that the best Superhero comics are not only significant aesthetic achievements - expressions of a misunderstood and under-appreciated art-form as distinctly American as Jazz or Rock & Roll - but that their aesthetic significance derives at least in part from their unique handling of these religious and spiritual themes. With chapters on Superman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, and Iron-Man, he considers these characters as artistic projections of our most primitive desires, and our highest aspirations. This series aims to showcase new work at the forefront of religion and literature through short studies written by leading and rising scholars in the field. Books will pursue a variety of theoretical approaches as they engage with writing from different religious and literary traditions. Collectively, the series will offer a timely critical intervention to the interdisciplinary crossover between religion and literature, speaking to wider contemporary interests and mapping out new directions for the field in the early twenty-first century.
A consideration of the modern Superhero comic as an expression of spiritual desire, showing what Superheroes can teach about our most essential human needs.
About the Author
Ben Saunders is Associate Professor of English at the University of Oregon. He is author of Desiring Donne: Poetry, Sexuality, Interpretation (Harvard University Press, 2006, nominated Finalist of the Oregon Book Award) and of numerous essays on different aspects of literary culture from Shakespeare to the present. He is also co-editor, with Roger Beebe and Denise Fulbrooke, of Rock Over the Edge: Essays in Popular Music Culture (Duke University Press, 2002).
Reviews
'Ben Saunders sets the bar high for himself when he says at the outset that a book about pop superheroes must be a book about spirituality and therefore about love. That might seem to place an unsupportable weight on the shoulders of Superman, Wonderwoman, Spiderman, and Iron man, but in this learned yet entirely accessible essay, Saunders makes both his thesis and his heroes stand up.' - Stanley Fish, Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and Law, Florida International University, USA
'Ben Saunders has done for comics analysis what Alan Moore did for comics literature. Do the Gods Wear Capes? is a provocative, intelligent, and thought-provoking work, and Saunders' insights rise from the page with the same power and grace as those iconic characters he examines. Certainly the best critical work on the meaning and impact of those marquee super-heroes that define the genre and that we encounter in myriad ways every day as has ever been written.' - Greg Rucka, novelist and author of Batwoman: Elegy, Whiteout, and Wonder Woman: The Hiketeia
In this excellent book, four iconic superheroes serve as Saunders's role models for social and spiritual awareness...Saunders's superb essay on Wonder Woman at long last makes sense of the odd ideological mix of feminism, pseudo-Greco-Roman spirituality, and sadomasochism(?) underpinning the character. He is one of the few comic scholars who appreciates and understands this revolutionary and deeply spiritual character...This volume is highly recommended. -- Marc DiPaolo * Religious Studies Review *
Ben Saunders gets at the crossover between psychology and superheroes, and at the difficulties it imposes, in his excellent 2011 book about the intersection between religion and superheroes, Do the Gods Wear Capes? -- Noah Berlatsky * The Atlantic *
Book Information
ISBN 9780826435569
Author Dr Ben Saunders
Format Hardback
Page Count 192
Imprint Continuum Publishing Corporation
Publisher Continuum Publishing Corporation
Series New Directions in Religion and Literature
A consideration of the modern Superhero comic as an expression of spiritual desire, showing what Superheroes can teach about our most essential human needs.
About the Author
Ben Saunders is Associate Professor of English at the University of Oregon. He is author of Desiring Donne: Poetry, Sexuality, Interpretation (Harvard University Press, 2006, nominated Finalist of the Oregon Book Award) and of numerous essays on different aspects of literary culture from Shakespeare to the present. He is also co-editor, with Roger Beebe and Denise Fulbrooke, of Rock Over the Edge: Essays in Popular Music Culture (Duke University Press, 2002).
Reviews
'Ben Saunders sets the bar high for himself when he says at the outset that a book about pop superheroes must be a book about spirituality and therefore about love. That might seem to place an unsupportable weight on the shoulders of Superman, Wonderwoman, Spiderman, and Iron man, but in this learned yet entirely accessible essay, Saunders makes both his thesis and his heroes stand up.' - Stanley Fish, Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and Law, Florida International University, USA
'Ben Saunders has done for comics analysis what Alan Moore did for comics literature. Do the Gods Wear Capes? is a provocative, intelligent, and thought-provoking work, and Saunders' insights rise from the page with the same power and grace as those iconic characters he examines. Certainly the best critical work on the meaning and impact of those marquee super-heroes that define the genre and that we encounter in myriad ways every day as has ever been written.' - Greg Rucka, novelist and author of Batwoman: Elegy, Whiteout, and Wonder Woman: The Hiketeia
In this excellent book, four iconic superheroes serve as Saunders's role models for social and spiritual awareness...Saunders's superb essay on Wonder Woman at long last makes sense of the odd ideological mix of feminism, pseudo-Greco-Roman spirituality, and sadomasochism(?) underpinning the character. He is one of the few comic scholars who appreciates and understands this revolutionary and deeply spiritual character...This volume is highly recommended. -- Marc DiPaolo * Religious Studies Review *
Ben Saunders gets at the crossover between psychology and superheroes, and at the difficulties it imposes, in his excellent 2011 book about the intersection between religion and superheroes, Do the Gods Wear Capes? -- Noah Berlatsky * The Atlantic *
Book Information
ISBN 9780826435569
Author Dr Ben Saunders
Format Hardback
Page Count 192
Imprint Continuum Publishing Corporation
Publisher Continuum Publishing Corporation
Series New Directions in Religion and Literature
