This collection of essays focuses on the role of spirituality in American literature through an examination of the multiple ways in which a deep engagement with the spiritual has shaped and affected literature in the Americas (three of the essays involve Canadian and Caribbean literature). The essays in the first section explore the intimate links between the spiritual and the social as they are manifested in forms of fiction like fantasy, science fiction, and the Christian fundamentalist fiction of Jerry B. Jenkins. The second section looks at the ways in which poetry has allowed writers as diverse as Emily Dickinson, Ellen Glasgow, Fanny Howe and Leonard Cohen to use language as a tool for exploring their complex relation to the spiritual seen in terms of radical otherness, or of exile, or of the search for common ground as human beings. The final section approaches spirituality as a defining element of the American experience, from Nathaniel Hawthorne to Toni Morrison and Paul Auster.

Kathie Birat is Emeritus Professor of American Literature at the University of Lorraine (Metz, France). She has published extensively in the fields of American, African American and Afro-Caribbean literature, with emphasis on questions related to orality and voice.
Brigitte Zaugg is Associate Professor at the University of Lorraine (Metz, France), where she teaches American literature and translation. Among the most recent books she has co-edited are L¿Espace du Sud au féminin (2011) and Dislocation culturelle et construction identitaire (2012). She is a member of IDEA research group.

Contents: Demelza Marlin: Incarnation and the Spirit of the Social ¿ Miriam Wallraven: Spirituality and Politics? Spiritual Models of Culture and Methods of World-making in Postmodern Utopian Texts ¿ Françoise Couturier-Storey/Jeff Storey: «God is a cluster of neurons»: Spirituality and Gene Manipulation in Margaret Atwood¿s Oryx and Crake ¿ Mokhtar Ben Barka: Left Behind as an Example of the Intersection between Fiction and Fundamentalist Christianity ¿ Hyesook Son: «Puritan Spirit» and the Question of the Other: A Levinasian Reading of Emily Dickinson¿s Religious Poems ¿ Brigitte Zaugg: A Haven for the Suffering Soul: Ellen Glasgow¿s Lifelong Quest ¿ Bénédicte Chorier-Fryd: The Lives of a Spirit: Mystical Bewilderment in Fanny Howe¿s Fiction ¿ Christophe Lebold: «I¿m the little Jew who wrote the Bible». A Reconfiguration of the Devotional Poet for the Age of the Mass Media: Leonard Cohen¿s Holy Hoaxes ¿ Stéphanie Carrez: «Fire-Worship»: Nathaniel Hawthorne¿s Spirituality of Fire ¿ Claude Le Fustec: The Spirit of the Letter: American Literature and the Quest for Kerygmatic Power ¿ Mirjana Danicic: The Spiritual Power of Toni Morrison¿s Fiction ¿ Kathie Birat: Syncretism and Spirituality in the Literature of the English-Speaking Caribbean: Erna Brodber¿s Myal ¿ Sina Vatanpour: Metaphysics of Language and the Experience of Writing in Paul Auster¿s City of Glass.