"Word and Soul examines the Fourth Gospel from the perspective of "soul." The soul approaches the Gospel as poetry; it engages johannine images and rhythms, and it explores likenesses to those images and rhythms in the world of the reader. This "soul reading" of the Gospel is influenced by three elements: analytical/archetypal psychology, which reorients psychology to "the study of the soul"; African-American cultural experience, which is often characterized as "soul"; and reader-response criticism, which emphasizes that the reading of a text is shaped by the reader's psychological and social location. After a brief methological discussion, portions of the Fourth Gospel are read "soulfully.""--BOOK JACKET.