Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2023
Abstract
Language about strangers, including ‘the heart of a stranger’ specifically, appears with frequency throughout the writings of John Woolman. This article argues that the stranger, inspired to a great extent by passages from the Bible, was a central philosophical and theological concept around which Woolman’s thought was gathered. For Woolman the stranger also functioned as a literary figure that united various parts of his work in what I refer to comprehensively as an aesthetics of the stranger. Ultimately, Woolman writing about strangers reflected his understanding of Jesus Christ as a stranger, which was the ground from which all his thinking originated.
Recommended Citation
Miller, Jay David, "John Woolman's Aesthetics of the Stranger" (2023). Faculty Publications - Department of English. 140.
https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/eng_fac/140