This book explores the call of literature, for both writers and their audiences, and reflects on how literary works have informed and drawn from and continue to inform and draw from theology, philosophy and sacred scripture. Key questions addressed include the following: How do creative writers and critics conceive this call? What does it mean to speak of a vocation to write and what have theologians and philosophers got to say on the matter? Is the spirit of literature always or necessarily an angel of light? Or is the call of literature a siren song? The essays by an international and interdisciplinary range of contributors discuss the work and testimony of writers from William Blake, Gerard Manley Hopkins and R.S. Thomas to James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Michel Houellebecq. Also examined are the ideas and influence of figures such as John Henry Newman, who wrote that the importance of literature stems from our very nature and God-given powers as human beings, especially language. This latest volume from The Power of the Word Project will be of interest to scholars from theology, philosophy and literature.
This book explores the call of literature, for both writers and their audiences, and reflects on how literary works have and continue to inform and draw from theology, philosophy and sacred scripture. This latest volume from The Power of the Word Project will be of interest to scholars from theology, philosophy and literature.
Introduction PART I: The Prophetic and the Religious Calling
1. John
Henry Newman, Poetry and the Grammar of Assent
2. The Call of Poetry
3.
Calling, Kairos, Kerygma: The Example of William Blake
4. 'It calls the
calling manly: Some Thoughts on Gerard Manley Hopkins and Vocation
5. R. S.
Thomas - Priest and/or Poet PART II: Literary and Spiritual Journeys
6.
Flannery O Connor: The Road to the Province of Joy
7. Goethes Roman
Holiday: A Meeting and Mingling of Self and World
8. Detective Fiction and
the Human Search for Meaning
9. Le compte ą rebours: Michel Houellebecq,
Soumission, and the Literature of Spiritual Exhaustion PART III: Deepening
the Call: Encounters Between Literature, Philosophy and Theology
10. Why Not
Flowers? A Writer in the Garden and a Call of Literature: Some Thoughts
Dedicated to Sandor Mįrai
11. The Unvoiced Fundamental Note: Atheistic
Literature and Divine Resonances
12. 'Not with clever speech': Tesich's
Karoo: Literary Insights on Postmodernity
13. Gerard Manley Hopkinss Poetic
Calls: The Performance of the Word
14. Hermeneutics and Resurrection:
Re-reading Virgil in Dantes Purgatorio 21-22 PART IV: Responding to the Call
15. Write what it is to be man: What Literature is Called to Do
16. The
Call of the Muses and The Lure of the Sirens: Ezra Pounds and T.S. Eliots
literary vocation
17. Poetry as a Call to Dance: George Mackay Brown and the
Healing Power of Literature
18. Poetry and Silence: The Dilemma for the
Spiritual Poet
David Lonsdale is a retired senior lecturer at Heythrop College, University of London, and a research associate at Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology, Cambridge, UK.
Emilia Di Rocco is a professor of Comparative Literature at Sapienza Universitą di Roma, Italy.
Brett H. Speakman completed his PhD at the Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts at the University of St Andrews, UK. He teaches literature and theology at The McCallie School in Chattanooga, TN, USA.
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