Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Talbert on Genre of Luke-Acts

Architecture Analysis is a particular method ("a variety of the species style criticism within the genus literary criticism") which Talbert borrows from classics scholars (5) who use it to "detect the formal patterns, rhythms, architectonic designs, or architecture" (7) of writings such as the Iliad and the Aeneid. C. Whitman and others argue that the patterns of literature and visual art often mirror a common cultural zeitgeist. The resulting conclusion is that form cannot be divorced from content (6), with the caveat that design need not reflect concerns beyond artistic ones.

Talbert contrasts this approach with redaction criticism, which is concerned with tendencies only as they indicate theology. Also, whereas redaction criticism looks for places where the author opposes those he is addressing (and thus focuses on what is distincting in his writing), architecture analysis focuses on the continuity between an author's style and cultural ideas. Talbert calls architectual analysis, then, a corrective to the subjectivity of redaction criticism.

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