Description
This book explores the prophetic characteristics of literature, particularly poetry, that seek to reimagine the world in which it is written. Using theological and philosophical insights it charts the relentless impulse of literature to propose alternative visions, practicable or utopian, and point toward possibilities of renewal and change.
Drawing from each of the three main Abrahamic religions, as well as Greek and Latin classics, an international group of scholars utilise a diverse range of analytical and interpretive methods to draw out the prophetic voice in poetry. Looking at the writings of figures like T. S. Elliot, Blake, Wittgenstein and Isaiah, the theme of the prophetic is shown to be of timely importance given the current state of geo-political challenges and uncertainties and offers a much-needed critical discussion of these broad cultural questions.
This collection of essays offers readers an insight into the constructive power of literature. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars working in Religion and the Arts, Religious Studies, Theology and Aesthetics.
Table of Contents
Contributors
Introduction by the Editors
I: Approaching the Prophetic: Orientations, Ancient and Modern
1 At the Creative Source of the Arts: Poetry as Prophecy in a Negative Theological Key
William Franke
2 Isaiah: Reading Writing, Re-Voicing Silent Israel
Katherine Brown
3 ‘Diversely and in Many Ways God poke by the Prophets’: New Testament Perspectives and William Blake on the Prophetic Word
Christopher Rowland
4 Poetry, Prophecy and the Angelic Voice: Reflections on the Divine Word
Mona Siddiqui
5 Prophecy and the Poetic Word
David Lonsdale
II: Prophecy in the Critical Lens of Philosophy
6 Explanation, Silence, and Then Poetry: Wittgenstein’s Poetic Philosophy as a
Prophetic Vision of Life
Paul Grosch
7 The Philosopher Empedocles as Prophet and His Reception by Freud
Alessandro Schiesaro
8 Poetry, Prophecy and Presence: Reading the Signs of the Times with Jacques Ellul
Jacob Rollison
9 Beyond the ‘Immanent Frame’: Charles Taylor as Interpreter of the Prophetic in Poetry
Lukasz Tischner
III. The Prophetic in the Witness of Literature
10 John Clare’s Romantic ‘I’: A Prophetic Poetics of Testimony
Elizabeth Dodd
11 Fearful Symmetry, Seventy Years On: Northrop Frye on William Blake
Michael Kirwan, SJ
12 Czesław Miłosz and R. S. Thomas as Prophetic Voices of Our Time
Pryemzslaw Michalski
13 When does a Pilgrim become a Prophet? R. S. Thomas, ‘This to do’, and the Shaping of a Prophet
Carys Walsh
14 T. S. Eliot and Tadeusz Różewicz: The Prophetic Strain
Jean Ward
15 The Forerunners: St. John the Baptist and Lazarus in the Poetry of T.S. Eliot
Malgorzata Grzegorzewska
IV. Looking Forward: Framing the Question of the Prophetic in Late-Modernity
16 The Power of Spiritual Poetry in a Secular World
Hilary Davies
17 ‘Nature Is Never Spent’?: The Prophetic Voice in Contemporary Canadian Ecological Poetry
Deborah Bowen
18 Prophecy as Hope: Interpreting the Silence of Holy Saturday
Tina Beattie
