A Poetics of Church

A Poetics of Church PDF Author: Jennifer Reek
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351396382
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
This innovative book aims to create a ‘poetics of Church’ and a ‘religious imaginary’ as alternatives to more institutional and conventional ways of thinking and of being ‘Church’. Structured as a spiritual and literary journey, the work moves from models of the institutional Catholic Church into more radical and ambiguous textual spaces, which the author creates by bringing together an unorthodox group of thinkers referred to as ‘poet-companions’: the 16th-century founder of the Society of Jesus, Ignatius of Loyola, the French thinkers Gaston Bachelard and Hélène Cixous, the French poet Yves Bonnefoy, and the English playwright Dennis Potter. Inspired especially by the reading and writing practices of Cixous, the author attempts to exemplify Cixous’ notion of écriture féminine—‘feminine writing’—that suggests new ways of seeing and relating. The project’s uniting of Ignatian spirituality with postmodern thinking and its concern with creating new theological, literary and spiritual spaces for women both coincide and contrast with Pope Francis’s pastoral and reformist tendencies, which have neglected to adequately address the marginalisation of women in the Church. As Francis has called for ‘a theology of women’, of which there are, of course, many to draw from, this volume will be a timely contribution with a unique interdisciplinary approach.

A Poetics of Church

A Poetics of Church PDF Author: Jennifer Reek
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351396382
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 254

Get Book Here

Book Description
This innovative book aims to create a ‘poetics of Church’ and a ‘religious imaginary’ as alternatives to more institutional and conventional ways of thinking and of being ‘Church’. Structured as a spiritual and literary journey, the work moves from models of the institutional Catholic Church into more radical and ambiguous textual spaces, which the author creates by bringing together an unorthodox group of thinkers referred to as ‘poet-companions’: the 16th-century founder of the Society of Jesus, Ignatius of Loyola, the French thinkers Gaston Bachelard and Hélène Cixous, the French poet Yves Bonnefoy, and the English playwright Dennis Potter. Inspired especially by the reading and writing practices of Cixous, the author attempts to exemplify Cixous’ notion of écriture féminine—‘feminine writing’—that suggests new ways of seeing and relating. The project’s uniting of Ignatian spirituality with postmodern thinking and its concern with creating new theological, literary and spiritual spaces for women both coincide and contrast with Pope Francis’s pastoral and reformist tendencies, which have neglected to adequately address the marginalisation of women in the Church. As Francis has called for ‘a theology of women’, of which there are, of course, many to draw from, this volume will be a timely contribution with a unique interdisciplinary approach.

A Poetics of Orthodoxy

A Poetics of Orthodoxy PDF Author: Benjamin P. Myers
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532695489
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 123

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Book Description
What makes one poem better than another? Do Christians have an obligation to strive for excellence in the arts? While orthodox Christians are generally quick to affirm the existence of absolute truth and absolute goodness, even many within the church fall prey to the postmodern delusion that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." This book argues that Christian doctrine in fact gives us a solid basis on which to make aesthetic judgments about poetry in particular and about the arts more generally. The faith once and for all delivered unto the saints is remarkable in its combined emphasis on embodied particularity and meaningful transcendence. This unique combination makes it the perfect starting place for art that speaks to who we are as creatures made for eternity.

Poetic Theology

Poetic Theology PDF Author: William A. Dyrness
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 080286578X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
What are the poetics of everyday life ? What can they teach us about God? Art, music, dance, and writing can certainly be poetic, but so can such diverse pastimes as fishing, skiing, or attending sports events. Any and all activities that satisfy our fundamental need for play, for celebration, and for ritual, says William Dyrness, are inherently poetic and in Poetic Theology he demonstrates that all such activities are places where God is active in the world. All of humanity s creative efforts, Dyrness points out, testify to our intrinsic longing for joy and delight and our deep desire to connect with others, with the created order, and especially with the Creator. This desire is rooted in the presence and calling of God in and through the good creation. With extensive reflection on aesthetics in spirituality, worship, and community development, Dyrness s Poetic Theology will be useful for all who seek fresh and powerful new ways to communicate the gospel in contemporary society. William Dyrness s bold invitation to a poetic theology shaped by Scripture, tradition, and imagination one luring us toward a fuller participation in beauty than argument or concept alone allow reminds us that truth itself is beautiful to behold and poetic to the core. . . . If poetry is in its deepest reflex an intensification of life, then Dyrness s call for a poetic theology is one we ignore at our peril, reminding us that faithful living is not only about proper thinking but also and, perhaps, more properly about the texture of our living and the quality of our loving. Mark S. Burrows Andover Newton Theological School Makes a strong case for aesthetics as one of the avenues used by God to draw human beings near to him and his glory. . . . A wonderful journey through Reformed spirituality and a wake-up call for Reformed theology. Cornelius van der Kooi Free University, Amsterdam

Piers Plowman and the Reinvention of Church Law

Piers Plowman and the Reinvention of Church Law PDF Author: Arvind Thomas
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 148750246X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
It is a medieval truism that the poet meddles with words, the lawyer with the world. But are the poet's words and the lawyer's world really so far apart? To what extent does the art of making poems share in the craft of making laws, and vice versa? Framed by such questions, Piers Plowman and the Reinvention of Church Law in the Late Middle Ages examines the mutually productive interaction between literary and legal "makyngs" in England's great Middle English poem by William Langland. Focusing on Piers Plowman's preoccupation with wrongdoing in the B and C versions, Arvind Thomas examines the versions' representations of trials, confessions, restitutions, penalties, and pardons. Thomas explores how the "literary" informs and transforms the "legal" until they finally cannot be separated. Thomas shows how the poem's narrative voice, metaphor, syntax and style not only reflect but also act upon properties of canon law, such as penitential procedures and authoritative maxims. Langland's mobilization of juridical concepts, Thomas insists, not only engenders a poetics informed by canonist thought but also expresses an alternative vision of canon law from that proposed by medieval jurists and today's medievalists.

An Introduction to the Old Testament Poetic Books

An Introduction to the Old Testament Poetic Books PDF Author: C. Hassell Bullock
Publisher: Moody Publishers
ISBN: 1575674505
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
The poetic books of the Old Testament--Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon--are often called humankind's reach toward God. The other books of the Old Testament picture God's reach toward man through the redemptive story. Yet these five books reveal the very hear of men and women struggling with monumental issues such as suffering, sin, forgiveness, joy, worship, and the passionate love between a man and woman. C. Hassell Bullock, a noted Old Testament scholar, delves deep into the hearts of the five poetic books, offering readers helpful details such as harmeneutical considerations for each book, theological content and themes, detailed analysis of each book, and cultural perspectives. Hebrew is a language of "intrinsic musical quality that naturally supports poetic expression," says Bullock in his introduction. That poetic expression comes from the heart of the Old Testament writers and reaches all of us exactly where we are in our own struggles and joys.

A Poetic Christ

A Poetic Christ PDF Author: Olivier-Thomas Venard
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567684709
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
Olivier-Thomas Venard's Thomas d'Aquin poète théologien trilogy, an in depth analysis of the scripture of St. Thomas Aquinas, is translated for a new audience in this streamlined anthology. Featuring selections from all three books in the trilogy, chosen in accordance with Venard's direction and discernment, it introduces not only arguments pertinent to the theme of this volume, but an invitation to explore the full breadth of Venard's work. Concentrating on the subjects of scripture, theology and literature, language as a theological question and the word of God, Murphy and Oakes capture the scope and energy of Venard's trilogy while collating many of its key passages. Ranging from the themes of a poetic gospel and Christology to the Thomist theories of semiology and the metaphysics of the Word, this volume sets scholars on the path to a deeper understanding of Aquinas's systematic theology.

Piers Plowman and the Poetics of Enigma

Piers Plowman and the Poetics of Enigma PDF Author: Curtis A. Gruenler
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
ISBN: 0268101655
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 524

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Book Description
In this book, Curtis Gruenler proposes that the concept of the enigmatic, latent in a wide range of medieval thinking about literature, can help us better understand in medieval terms much of the era’s most enduring literature, from the riddles of the Anglo-Saxon bishop Aldhelm to the great vernacular works of Dante, Chaucer, Julian of Norwich, and, above all, Langland’s Piers Plowman. Riddles, rhetoric, and theology—the three fields of meaning of aenigma in medieval Latin—map a way of thinking about reading and writing obscure literature that was widely shared across the Middle Ages. The poetics of enigma links inquiry about language by theologians with theologically ambitious literature. Each sense of enigma brings out an aspect of this poetics. The playfulness of riddling, both oral and literate, was joined to a Christian vision of literature by Aldhelm and the Old English riddles of the Exeter Book. Defined in rhetoric as an obscure allegory, enigma was condemned by classical authorities but resurrected under the influence of Augustine as an aid to contemplation. Its theological significance follows from a favorite biblical verse among medieval theologians, “We see now through a mirror in an enigma, then face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12). Along with other examples of the poetics of enigma, Piers Plowman can be seen as a culmination of centuries of reflection on the importance of obscure language for knowing and participating in endless mysteries of divinity and humanity and a bridge to the importance of the enigmatic in modern literature. This book will be especially useful for scholars and undergraduate students interested in medieval European literature, literary theory, and contemplative theology.

Proof Something Happened

Proof Something Happened PDF Author: Tony Trigilio
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780996991230
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
" Challenging us to take responsibility for why we yearn to believe, or if not-- what to expect." - Susan Howe

Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative

Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative PDF Author: Adele Berlin
Publisher: Eisenbrauns
ISBN: 9781575060026
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
Poetics, the "science" of literature, makes us aware of how texts achieve their meaning. Poetics aids interpretation. If we know how texts mean, we are in a better position to discover what a particular text means. This is a book which offers fundamental guidelines for the sensitive reading and understanding of biblical stories. - Back cover.

The Grace of Incorruption

The Grace of Incorruption PDF Author: Donald Sheehan
Publisher: Paraclete Press
ISBN: 1612617018
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
Professor and scholar, teacher of poets and poetry and convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, Donald Sheehan wrote these wide-ranging essays with a common commitment to understanding the ways in which the ruining oppositions of our experience can be held within the disciplines of lyric art—held “until God Himself can be seen in the ruins . . . and overwhelmingly and gratefully loved.” That is what Sheehan means by “the grace of incorruption.” Part One weaves together themes from Sheehan’s life and pilgrimages; the spiritual art of Orthodox Saints Gregory of Nyssa, Isaac and Ephraim of Syria, and others; the literary art of Dostoevsky, Frost, Salinger, and contemporary poets including Jane Kenyon; and the philosophy of René Girard—examining the nature of penitence, prayer, personhood, freedom, depression, and the right relationship to the earth. Part Two delves into the poetics of The Psalms, especially LXX 118: a “poetics of resurrection.” “I am dead certain that my response to this volume will chime with those of others whose work is held up to the light in The Grace of Incorruption. In one beautiful sentence after another, we must share the uncanny sense of never having understood our own hearts—not until we saw them reflected in the great heart (and mind) of this nonpareil commentator. Don Sheehan did not merely understand poetry; it was part and parcel of his own great soul." —Sydney Lea, Vermont Poet Laureate “This was a very difficult book for me to read, as—now and again—my own tears blinded me to the page, and my own sobbing shook the papers in my hands. That is to say that Donald Sheehan’s journey—through both brokenness and beauty—to a deep and healing calm is at once personal and universal. With a poet’s visionary prose, a scholar’s acuity, and a pilgrim’s devotion, Donald Sheehan offers his reader access to the profound, compelling stillness at the heart of all things. He proves an exceedingly good guide along the way.”—Scott Cairns, author of Slow Pilgrim: Collected Poems “In this beautiful book, Dostoyevsky, Orthodox liturgy, and Holy Fathers ancient and modern converse with Shakespeare, Frost, Salinger, Jane Kenyon and René Girard, sharing insight into such realities as memory, violence, depression, stillness, self-emptying love, personhood, and ‘the anthropology of the Cross.’ This conversation, a ‘spiritual ecumenism’ effected in art, gathers finally round the heart and source of all tradition of poetry and prayer in Christian East and West alike: the Psalms of David. Orthodox Christian contributions to Anglophone poetry and poetics are few. Don Sheehan was not only a fine interpreter of poetry, but a poet himself, working in the medium of prose. The philosopher Malebranche famously wrote that ‘attentiveness is the natural prayer of the soul,’ and the Orthodox liturgy bids us continually to ‘be attentive.’ The essays in this volume capture that spirit of loving attentiveness -- never lacking in form -- for which Don ardently strove, and which characterized his approach to art, to other people, and to God.”—Fr. Matthew Baker, Fordham University