While I believe that this approach

While I believe that this approach will open both fairy talcs and epics to interpretations heretofore ignored, a cursory survey of the criticism of these genres would show that even linear thinking has generated a variety of interesting responses to both genres. This diversity is not characteristic of every literary form, and I consequently wish to demonstrate the effectiveness of my approach when confronted with a text already circumscribed by canonical readings. In this case I have turned to the biblical account in the Book of Job. As I illustrate in chapter 6, even such innovative linear approaches to it as feminist readings provide only limited alternatives to the conventional responses to Job. In contrast, nonlinear thinking can reconfigure the work in a fashion that allows readers both to sustain reverence for it as a