Poetry and the Religious Imagination

Contents: Preface; Introduction, Francesca Bugliani Knox. Part I Theology and Literature in Context: Theology and literature in the English-speaking world, Michael Kirwan; Why theologians are interested in literature: theological-literary hermeneutics in the works of Guardini, Balthasar, Tillich and Kuschel, Georg Langenhorst. Part II The Religious Imagination: from Thomas Aquinas to Wallace Stevens: Identifying a religious imagination, Michael Paul Gallagher SJ; Religious imagination and poetic audacity in Thomas Aquinas, Olivier-Thomas Venard OP; Dante and the indispensability of the image, John Took; Law and divine mercy in Shakespeare’s religious imagination: Measure for Measure and The Merchant of Venice, Paul S. Fiddes; Wallace Stevens on God, imagination and reality, John McDade. Part III Inspiration: Poetry and Poetry Reading: Poetry as scripture, poetry as inspiration, Jay Parini; The poet as ‘worldmaker’: T.S. Eliot and the religious imagination, Dominic Griffiths; Non tantum lecturi sed facturi: reading poetry as spiritual transformation, Antonio Spadaro SJ; Reading as active contemplation, Jennifer Reek. Part IV Poets and Spiritual Experience: Mystical Gestures: ‘There is a verge of the mind’: imagination and mystical gesture in Rilke’s later poems, Mark S. Burrows; ‘The pulse in the wound’: embodiment and grace in Denise Levertov’s religious poetry, Sarah Law. Part V Poetry, Religious Imagination and Religious Belief: Images of the Virgin in the late 16th century: the Catholic devotional poetry of Henry Constable, Lilla Grindlay. Index.