The Poetics of Religious Faith Image in Christian and Islamic Literary Traditions: Dimensions of Interrelation (Based on Western European and Azerbaijani Literary Works).
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Дата
2025-12-02
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Alfred Nobel University
Анотація
The article examines the interpretation of religious theme in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Western European and Azerbaijani literatures, drawing on the works of Prosper Mérimée, Jalil Mammadguluzadeh, Ethel Lilian Voynich, and Mammad Said Ordubadi. At the center of this inquiry lies the question of how religious discourse is transformed amid the formation of new ethical systems and social consciousness, and how artistic forms respond to the crisis of traditional faith and the search for moral orientation beyond ecclesiastical dogma.
The aim of this study is to identify the dimensions of interaction, similarity, and mutual influence between the poetics of Western European and Azerbaijani literatures in their engagement with religious themes. The research employs comparative, historical-literary, cultural-historical, and hermeneutic methods.
The findings demonstrate that in P. Mérimée’s The Woman Is a Devil, or The Temptation of St. Anthony (Une femme est un diable, ou La tentation de Saint Antoine) and J. Mammadguluzadeh’s The Dead (Ölülər), the religious theme manifests through the exploration of the motifs of genuine and feigned sanct ity. In Mérimée, the inversion of the sacred and the profane shapes a poetics of individual-psychological conflict, wherein the motif of sin and temptation acquires a comic dimension. In Mammadguluzadeh’s The Dead, the exposure of false holiness and hypocrisy assumes a social dimension, expressed through a satirical and grotesque poetics.
In E.L. Voynich’s The Gadfly and M.S. Ordubadi’s Foggy Tabriz (Dumanlı Təbriz), the collision between religious faith and revolutionary struggle attains a tragic-philosophical resonance. Through the fate of Arthur Burton, Voynich reveals an individual conflict between faith and revolution, between love for God and belief in humankind. Religious symbols are reinterpreted here through the lens of secular humanism, while the novel’s structure reproduces a Gospel-like paradigm of suffering and sacrifice. In Ordubadi’s Foggy Tabriz, religious problematic unfolds within a socio-historical and national-historical framework: the Islamic tradition is portrayed as a realm in which the confrontation between dogma and reason becomes a driving force of the people’s spiritual awakening. The symbolism of fog, light, prayer, and lament acquires a philosophical significance, shaping a poetics of symbolic realism.
The study concludes that in all four texts, the religious theme serves not a confessional but rather a philosophical and ethical function. The authors treat faith as an inner moral state distinct from outward ritual. Within the poetics of each work, religious motifs are reinterpreted as artistic expressions of spiritual quest: prayer becomes an act of conscience, sacrifice, a form of self-affirmation, and lament—a sign of historical memory.
Thus, the article demonstrates that in the literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, religious themes emerge as a field of artistic experimentation, wherein the genuine spirituality of the individual—one who seeks meaning beyond dogma, within the moral and ethical domain, yet retains an inner need for faith—is revealed.
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Ключові слова
religious theme, faith, motif of true and false sanctity, virtuous act, conflict between religion and revolution, comic conflict, satire, irony, tragic dimension, individual and social comprehension of religious discourse, moral and ethical issues, релігійна тема, віра, мотив справжньої і уявної святості, благе діяння, конфлікт релігії і революції, комічний конфлікт, сатира, іронія, трагізм, індивідуальний і соціальний аспект осмислення релігійної тематики, морально-етична проблематика