Francesca Bugliani Knox - Poetry and Prayer: The Power of the Word II

Interdisciplinary and ecumenical in scope, Poetry and Prayer offers theoretical discussion on the profound connection between poetic inspiration and prayer as well as reflection on the work of individual writers and the traditions within which they stand.

An international range of established and new scholars in literary studies and theology offer unique contributions to the neglected study of poetry in relation to prayer. consider these and related ideas from the point of view of their implementation in a range of different authors and traditions, offering case studies from, for example, the Bible, Dante, Shakespeare and Herbert, as well as twentieth-century poets such as Thomas Merton, Denise Levertov, W.H. Auden and R.S. Thomas.

Lexprience potique se refuse au blasphme comme la prire, mais avec cette difference que sil lui est absolument impossible de provoquer au blasphme, elle ne peut pas ne pas metre en branle le mcanisme psychologique de la prire.

[Poetic experience knows not blasphemy any more than prayer, but while it is absolutely impossible for it to provoke to blasphemy, it cannot help starting the psychological mechanism of prayer.]

Henri Bremond

The Power of the Word II

Edited by
FRANCESCA BUGLIANI KNOX

Heythrop College, University of London, UK

JOHN TOOK

University College London, UK

First published 2015 by Ashgate Publishing

Published 2016 by Routledge

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Copyright Francesca Bugliani Knox, John Took and the Contributors 2015

Francesca Bugliani Knox and John Took have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Poetry and prayer : the power of the word II / edited by Francesca Bugliani Knox and John Took.

pages cm

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-4724-2621-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-3156-0098-7 (ebook) ISBN 978-1-3170-7938-5 (epub) 1. Religion and poetry. 2. PoetryHistory and criticism. 3. Religious poetryHistory and criticism. 4. Christianity and literature. 5. Prayer in literature. I. Bugliani Knox, Francesca, 1953- editor. II. Took, J. F. editor.

PN1077.P5745 2015

809.19382dc23

2015007927

ISBN 9781472426215 (hbk)

ISBN 9781315600987 (ebk-PDF)

ISBN 9781317079385 (ebk-ePUB)

Francesca Bugliani Knox

David Lonsdale

Mark S. Burrows

Antonio Spadaro SJ

Jay Parini

Jennifer Reek

David Rensberger

John Took

Magorzata Grzegorzewska

Jean Ward

Richard McLauchlan

Sarah Law

Hester Jones

Dana Greene

Mark S. Burrows is currently Professor at the University of Applied Sciences in Bochum, Germany. Recently he has published translations of poems by Rainer Maria Rilke, Prayers of a Young Poet (2013) and by SAID, 99 Psalms (2013). A volume of his own poetry, Epiphanies, will appear in 2015. His work explores the literature of medieval mysticism as well as the horizon of modern poetry. He serves as poetry editor for two journals: Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality and ARTS: The Arts in Religious and Theological Studies.

Dana Greene is Dean Emerita of Oxford College of Emory University, author of biographies of Maisie Ward (1997), Evelyn Underhill (1990, repr. 1998) and Denise Levertov (2012), and editor of four other volumes. She is currently writing a biography of Elizabeth Jennings. For three decades she served as Professor of History at St Marys College of Maryland and subsequently as Executive Director of the Aquinas Center of Theology at Emory University.

Magorzata Grzegorzewska is Professor of English Literature and Head of the Department of English Studies at the University of Warsaw. She has published on Shakespeare, metaphysical poetry and Renaissance culture. Her research interests include the connections between literature, philosophy and theology.

Hester Jones is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Bristol. She has published works on a wide range of subjects, including the poetry of Alexander Pope and W.S. Graham, ecocriticism and poetry, the Rossettis and, more recently, on twentieth-century poets and Christian belief, including W.H. Auden and R.S. Thomas. She is currently completing a monograph on this subject.

Francesca Bugliani Knox is a Research Associate at Heythrop College and Teaching Fellow at University College London. Her publications include translations into Italian as well as several books and articles on various aspects of English and Italian literature from the Renaissance to the present, including The Eye of the Eagle: John Donne and the Legacy of Ignatius Loyola (2011). She was the editor, with David Lonsdale, of Poetry and the Religious Imagination (2015). At present she is putting together a collection of essays by various authors on Monsignor Ronald Knox for the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

Sarah Law is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and English Literature at London Metropolitan University. Her interests include explorations of mysticism in contemporary poetry and culture. Her publications include essays on Julian of Norwich: In the Centre in Julian of Norwichs Legacy (2009) and In a Hazelnut: Julian of Norwich in Contemporary Womens Poetry in Literature and Theology (March 2011). She has also published five collections of poetry, the latest of which, Inks Wish (2014), was inspired by medieval visionary Margery Kempe. Her chapter The Pulse in the Wound: Embodiment and Grace in Denise Levertovs Religious Poetry appeared in the first volume of this series, Poetry and the Religious Imagination (2015).

David Lonsdale taught Christian Spirituality at postgraduate level at Heythrop College, University of London, for over twenty years and supervised doctoral students researching the interface between spirituality, theology and literature in the work of John Donne, George Herbert, G.K. Chesterton and R.S. Thomas. He was co-editor of the international journals of Christian spirituality The Way and The Way Supplement from 1984 to 1995. He is the author of Eyes to See, Ears to Hear: An Introduction to Ignatian Spirituality (1990, revised edn 2000), Dance to the Music of the Spirit: The Art of Discernment