Over the next two days, we have our semester 1 exams here at Cliff - scared students for some reason or other. Just imagine sitting in that room with frantic scribblings happening all around and so much work left behind in my study!!!
I am going to take Yvan Bourquin's book on Mark's Gospel with me as company - it's a great book which I am just finishing reviewing (Marc, une theologie de la fragilite) - full of daft non-sequiturs and postmodern paradoxes. He argues, basically, that Mark's presentation of the Gospel promotes a theology of paradox and grace delivered to an implicit reader who is prone to looking on the more negative side of life. A Gospel for the Manically Depressed? It sounds a bit postmodern to me - and to Bourquin but that doesn't seem to matter! There is some great literary theory stuff exploring theorists like Genette and Eco and so on - very similar in that respect to my approach to John. Interestingly Bourquin also focusses on the beginning (and the end) of Mark's Gospel as interpretative key - giving the context within which the rest of the book needs to be read.
The only problem is that it is all in French. Now that's OK - I can read French - just. In fact, because it is using the same works which I tend to have a grasp of already, that makes it a bit easier. But the guy keeps on translating everything - you get this bit of Wolfgang Iser translated into lovely French. Strange...I do love what the French language can do to literary theory - it sounds much more philosophical in French somehow...
Better get on with it...
By the way - this is not the same Yvan Bourquin. This guy does biomedical robotics somewhere in Switzerland and has the same name...but he does look like a postmodern kind of person who could write about the theology of fragility in Mark - doesn't he?
Google couldn't find a picture of Yvan the Theologian. Although it could find a picture of Ivor the Engine...of blessed memory!
Have a good day
Pete
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