This year’s YSJU Big Summer Read will be Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad! Everyone can join in — share your experience on social media with #YSJBigSummerRead
big summer read: gospel, testimony or testament?
This summer, the York St John Literature programme invited students and staff to read and respond to Colm Tóibín’s 2012 novella The Testament of Mary, a study of the mother of Jesus of Nazareth as she comes to terms with her son’s crucifixion at hands of the Roman Empire. In today’s post, Adam asks: Why is it called a ‘Testament’ anyway?
By Dr Adam James Smith
Much as Margaret Atwood’s 2008 novella The Penelopiad relished the opportunity to give voice to a woman too often left silent despite her centrality to both her myth of original and subsequent literary culture, Colm Tóibín clearly delights in offering centre stage to a woman without whom there would be no New Testament. Defined and iconicized as the Mother of Christ, Mary is most often understood through her maternal relationship to the son of God, rather than as an individual in her own right. Continue reading “big summer read: gospel, testimony or testament?”