Literature’s probative force travels across the realm of sense in this world to what lies beyond it. When we speak of what is beyond our grasp in this world, we think most immediately of the world of the spirit. Shakespeare famously celebrates literature’s power to explore the "forms of things unknown." How many great works of literature guide us through a familiar world to the edge of the spiritual unknown? Not only Shakespeare, but Dante, Milton, Dostoevsky, Hopkins, Eliot, O’Connor, and many others in these pages carry us there. This book follows their quest.

Literary apologetics is the study of the characteristic moves by the authors who take readers on their journey of faith with them. Most notably, that tradition begins with Latin authors, spreads across Europe in a continuous literary culture, and extends over world literature to the present day. While early apologetics is proclamation, rhetoric, philosophy, and poetry, above all it is witness to the faith manifesting itself in time. The early faith community produces a distinct literary culture as Christian witness takes all these forms and more. From then until now, this kind of literature probes ultimate questions, adumbrates numinous experience, and extrapolates ethical outcomes of Christian teachings across a wide variety of literary forms. The Handbook of Literary Apologetics provides an authoritative introduction to the scope of this tradition and its major figures.