Religion as Poetry

Religion as Poetry PDF Author: Andrew M. Greeley
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351493787
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Religion as Poetry continues in the grand tradition of the sociology of religion pioneered by Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Talcott Parsons, among other giants in intellectual history. Too many present-day sociologists either ignore or disparage religious currents. In this provocative book, Andrew M. Greeley argues that various religions have endured for thousands of years as poetic rituals and stories. Religion as Poetry proposes a theoretical framework for understanding religion that emphasizes insights derived from religious stories. By virtue of his own rare abilities as a novelist as well as sociologist, Greeley is uniquely qualified for this task.Greeley first considers classical theories of the sociology of religion, and then, drawing upon them, he explicates his own interpretation. He critically examines the viewpoint that society is becoming more secular, and that religion is declining. He observes that this theory stands in the way of persuading sociologists that religion is still worth studying. In contrast, Greeley is interested in why religions persist despite secular trends and alongside them. He argues that it is poetic elements that touch the human soul. Greeley then sets out to test this viewpoint.Greeley maintains that his theory is not the only, or necessarily even the best approach to study religion. Rather, it is his contention that it uniquely provides sociologists with perspectives on religion that other theories too often overlook or disregard. Religion as Poetry, an original and intriguing study by a distinguished social scientist and major novelist, will be enjoyed and evaluated by sociologists, ' theologians, and philosophers alike.

Religion as Poetry

Religion as Poetry PDF Author: Andrew M. Greeley
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351493787
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book Here

Book Description
Religion as Poetry continues in the grand tradition of the sociology of religion pioneered by Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Talcott Parsons, among other giants in intellectual history. Too many present-day sociologists either ignore or disparage religious currents. In this provocative book, Andrew M. Greeley argues that various religions have endured for thousands of years as poetic rituals and stories. Religion as Poetry proposes a theoretical framework for understanding religion that emphasizes insights derived from religious stories. By virtue of his own rare abilities as a novelist as well as sociologist, Greeley is uniquely qualified for this task.Greeley first considers classical theories of the sociology of religion, and then, drawing upon them, he explicates his own interpretation. He critically examines the viewpoint that society is becoming more secular, and that religion is declining. He observes that this theory stands in the way of persuading sociologists that religion is still worth studying. In contrast, Greeley is interested in why religions persist despite secular trends and alongside them. He argues that it is poetic elements that touch the human soul. Greeley then sets out to test this viewpoint.Greeley maintains that his theory is not the only, or necessarily even the best approach to study religion. Rather, it is his contention that it uniquely provides sociologists with perspectives on religion that other theories too often overlook or disregard. Religion as Poetry, an original and intriguing study by a distinguished social scientist and major novelist, will be enjoyed and evaluated by sociologists, ' theologians, and philosophers alike.

Interpretations of Poetry and Religion

Interpretations of Poetry and Religion PDF Author: George Santayana
Publisher: Good Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
In this valuable work, George Santayana developed the view that poetry is called religion when it intervenes in life, and religion is seen to be nothing but poetry when it merely supervenes upon life. He states that religion and poetry are celebrations of life. Each holds a great value, but if either is misunderstood for science, the art of life will be lost along with the beauty of poetry and religion. Science provides explanations of natural phenomena, but poetry and religion are joyful celebrations of human life born of consciousness. His views contributed immensely to the debate between science and religion at the turn of the century and continue to impact current discussions about the nature of religion. He remained sympathetic to religion and people with religious beliefs throughout the work. He expressed that the religious doctrine might all be just a delusion, but it is generally a helpful one, and the ideal meaning of religion is the nearest thing we have when it comes to complete truth.

Faith in Poetry

Faith in Poetry PDF Author: Michael D. Hurley
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474234097
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
In this ambitious book, Michael D. Hurley explores how five great writers – William Blake, Alfred Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and T. S. Eliot – engaged their religious faith in poetry, with a view to asking why they chose that literary form in the first place. What did they believe poetry could say or do that other kinds of language or expression could not? And how might poetry itself operate as a unique mode of believing? These deep questions meet at the crossroads of poetics and metaphysics, and the writers considered here offer different answers. But these writers also collectively shed light on the interplay between literature and theology across the long nineteenth century, at a time when the authority and practice of both was being fiercely reimagined.

God and Elizabeth Bishop

God and Elizabeth Bishop PDF Author: C. Walker
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1403979480
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 163

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Book Description
In God and Elizabeth Bishop Cheryl Walker takes the bold step of looking at the work of Elizabeth Bishop as though it might have something fresh to say about religion and poetry. Going wholly against the tide of recent academic practice, especially as applied to Bishop, she delights in presenting herself as an engaged Christian who nevertheless believes that a skeptical modern poet might feed our spiritual hungers. This is a book that reminds us of the rich tradition of religious poetry written in English, at the same time taking delicious detours into realms of humour, social responsibility, and mysticism.

Women's Poetry and Religion in Victorian England

Women's Poetry and Religion in Victorian England PDF Author: Cynthia Scheinberg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139434225
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Victorian women poets lived in a time when religion was a vital aspect of their identities. Cynthia Scheinberg examines Anglo-Jewish (Grace Aguilar and Amy Levy) and Christian (Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti) women poets, and argues that there are important connections between the discourses of nineteenth-century poetry, gender and religious identity. Further, Scheinberg argues that Jewish and Christian women poets had a special interest in Jewish discourse; calling on images from Judaism and the Hebrew Scriptures, their poetry created complex arguments about the relationships between Jewish and female artistic identity. She suggests that Jewish and Christian women used poetry as a site for creative and original theological interpretation, and that they entered into dialogue through their poetry about their own and each other's religious and artistic identities. This book's interdisciplinary methodology calls on poetics, religious studies, feminist literary criticism, and little read Anglo-Jewish primary sources.

Religion Around Emily Dickinson

Religion Around Emily Dickinson PDF Author: W. Clark Gilpin
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 027106613X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
Religion Around Emily Dickinson begins with a seeming paradox posed by Dickinson’s posthumously published works: while her poems and letters contain many explicitly religious themes and concepts, throughout her life she resisted joining her local church and rarely attended services. Prompted by this paradox, W. Clark Gilpin proposes, first, that understanding the religious aspect of the surrounding culture enhances our appreciation of Emily Dickinson’s poetry and, second, that her poetry casts light on features of religion in nineteenth-century America that might otherwise escape our attention. Religion, especially Protestant Christianity, was “around” Emily Dickinson not only in explicitly religious practices, literature, architecture, and ideas but also as an embedded influence on normative patterns of social organization in the era, including gender roles, education, and ideals of personal intimacy and fulfillment. Through her poetry, Dickinson imaginatively reshaped this richly textured religious inheritance to create her own personal perspective on what it might mean to be religious in the nineteenth century. The artistry of her poetry and the profundity of her thought have meant that this personal perspective proved to be far more than “merely” personal. Instead, Dickinson’s creative engagement with the religion around her has stimulated and challenged successive generations of readers in the United States and around the world.

Poetry and the Religious Imagination

Poetry and the Religious Imagination PDF Author: Francesca Bugliani Knox
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317079353
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
What is the role of spiritual experience in poetry? What are the marks of a religious imagination? How close can the secular and the religious be brought together? How do poetic imagination and religious beliefs interact? Exploring such questions through the concept of the religious imagination, this book integrates interdisciplinary research in the area of poetry on the one hand, and theology, philosophy and Christian spirituality on the other. Established theologians, philosophers, literary critics and creative writers explain, by way of contemporary and historical examples, the primary role of the religious imagination in the writing as well as in the reading of poetry.

Faith, Hope and Poetry

Faith, Hope and Poetry PDF Author: Malcolm Guite
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 9781409449362
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Faith, Hope and Poetry explores the poetic imagination as a way of knowing; a way of seeing reality more clearly. Presenting a series of critical appreciations of English poetry from Anglo-Saxon times to the present day, Malcolm Guite applies the insights of poetry to contemporary issues and the contribution poetry can make to our religious knowing and the way we 'do Theology'. Readers of this book will return to their reading of poetry equipped with new insights and enthusiasm and will be challenged to integrate imaginative ways of knowing into their other academic and intellectual pursuits.

Religious Allusion in the Poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks

Religious Allusion in the Poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks PDF Author: Margot Harper Banks
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 078644939X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
This book examines how Gwendolyn Brooks, a self-proclaimed nonreligious person, advocates adherence to Christian ideals through religious allusions in her poetry. The discussion integrates Brooks' words, biographical data, commentary by other scholars, scriptural references, and doctrinal tenets. It identifies biblical figures and events and highlights Brooks' effective use of the sermon genre, and her express parallels between Christianity and Democracy. The work opens with a biographical chapter and Brooks' comments on religion, followed by analyses of her long poems, and more than thirty of her short ones. An illuminating interview with Nora Brooks Blakely about Brooks' religious background and philosophy is included.

Thick and Dazzling Darkness

Thick and Dazzling Darkness PDF Author: Peter O'Leary
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231545975
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
How do poets use language to render the transcendent, often dizzyingly inexpressible nature of the divine? In an age of secularism, does spirituality have a place in modern American poetry? In Thick and Dazzling Darkness, Peter O’Leary reads a diverse set of writers to argue for the existence and importance of religious poetry in twentieth- and twenty-first-century American literature. He traces a poetic genealogy that begins with Whitman and Dickinson and continues in the work of contemporary writers to illuminate an often obscured but still central spiritual impulse that has shaped the production and imagination of American poetry. O’Leary presents close and comprehensive readings of the modernist, late-modernist, and postmodern poets Robinson Jeffers, Frank Samperi, and Robert Duncan, as well as the contemporary poets Joseph Donahue, Geoffrey Hill, Fanny Howe, Nathaniel Mackey, Pam Rehm, and Lissa Wolsak. Examining how these poets drew on a variety of traditions, including Catholicism, Gnosticism, the Kabbalah, and mysticism, the book considers how modern and contemporary poets have articulated the spiritual in their work. O’Leary also argues that an anxiety of misunderstanding exists in the study and writing of poetry between secular and religious impulses and that the religious nature of poets’ works is too often marginalized or misunderstood. Examining the works of a specific poet in each chapter, O’Leary reveals their complexity and offers a defense of the value and meaning of religious poetry against the grain of a secular society.