Full Description
David Jones: A Christian Modernist? is a major reassessment of the work of the poet, artist and essayist David Jones (1895-1974) in light of the complex, ambiguous idea of a 'Christian modernism'. His richly experimental and palimpsestic poetry, art and thought drew extensively on Christian tradition and symbolism as a key to the future: rejecting a technocratic and utilitarian modernity in favour of a revitalised culture of sign and sacrament. This volume examines historical influences on Jones's development, his impassioned engagement with the idea of modernity and with modernist literature and art, the theological sources and resonances of his work, and contemporary or late-modern perspectives on his achievement.
Contents
List of Contributors
Introduction
David Jones: Christian Traveller on the Paths of Modernity
Paul S. Fiddes
PART 1. Christian Modernism
"A Heap of All That I Could Find": David Jones' Fragmented Sacrament
Tom Goldpaugh
David Jones' Catholic Engagement with Modernism and the Development of Tradition
Martin Potter
Christian and "Modernist" Typology in The Anathemata
Simon D. Trub
"Make It New": Defamiliarization and Sacramentality in David Jones
Alison Milbank
PART 2. The Break, War and Politics
History as Grail Quest: David Jones' Controversial Quest for Sacrament
Sarah E. Coogan
The "World of Sense" in In Parenthesis
Rosie Lavan
David Jones and the Chelsea Group
Thomas Dilworth
Catholicism, Modernism and Fascism: The Politics of David Jones
Tom Villis
PART 3. A Sacramental Poetics
Saying More and Making Other: Poetry as Sacrament
Daniel Gustafsson
"Some Wayward Art": David Jones and the Later Work of Geoffrey Hill
Paul Robichaud
Symbol and Sacrament in David Jones' Eclogue IV
Fr. John David Ramsey
In Parenthesis, the Eucharist and the Mythical Method
Jean Ward
Unfolding the "Implied Theology" of In Parenthesis in Several Biblical and Liturgical Allusions to the Passion of Christ
Anna Svendsen
David Jones and the Influence of Analogy
Thomas Berenato
PART 4. A Poet in Late-Modernity
The Sacramental Modernism of David Jones and the World as Text
Paul S. Fiddes
The Tribune's Visitation and Fulcrum Press: The Publishing Contexts of Late-Modernist Poetry
Matthew Sperling
David Jones: A Poet's Perspective
Micheal O'Siadhail
David Jones: Christian Artist at the Dawn of a Post-Christian Era
Kathleen Henderson Staudt
Index
