1st Edition
Poetry, Philosophy and Theology in Conversation Thresholds of Wonder: The Power of the Word IV
This volume is a collection of essays that explains how literature, philosophy and theology have explored the role of wonder in our lives, particularly through poetry. Wonder has been an object of fascination for these disciplines from the Greek antiquity onwards, yet the connections between their views on the subject are often ignored in subject specific studies.
The book is divided into three parts: Part I opens the conversation on wonder in philosophy, Part II is given to theology and Part III to literary perspectives. An international set of contributors, including poets as well as scholars, have produced a study that looks beyond traditional chronological, geographical and disciplinary boundaries, both within the individual essays themselves and in respect to one another. The volume’s wide historical framework is punctuated by four poems by contemporary poets on the theme of wonder.
An unconventional foray into one of the best-known themes of the European tradition, this book will be of great interest to scholars of literature, theology and philosophy.
Introduction: Why Wonder? Francesca Bugliani Knox Part I: Philosophical Perspectives; ‘In the Valley of the Lot’, Hilary Davies 1 The Wonder of Not Wondering: from Plato to Lucretius, Guido Milanese 2 Wonder and the Philosopher’s Perfection: Giordano Bruno, Dilwyn Knox 3 Wonder, Epiphany, Haecceity in Gerard Manley Hopkins, Richard Kearney 4 Wonder in Ethics and Aesthetics: Wittgenstein and Rabindranath Tagore, Priyambada Sarkar 5 A Mysticism of a Dead Leaf: A Brief Apology for an Ordinary Phenomenon, Philippe Nouzille Part II: Theological Perspectives; ‘The Litany’, Dana Gioia 6 The Extraordinary of the Ordinary: G.K. Chesterton, Imagination and the Wonder of a Natural Theology, Brett H. Speakman 7 Between Rapture and Rupture: An Exploration of Wonder, Bernard Sawicki OSB 8 Between the Poet and the Legislator: On Wonder and Ambivalence in Midrash and Hebrew Poetry, Ariel Zinder 9 Scandalous Wonder: Contemplating the Cross with Isaac Watts, Jean Ward 10 This World of Wonders: Theology, Poetics and Everyday Life, Heather Walton Part III: Literary Perspectives; ‘Creed’, Jay Parini 11 Wonder and the Power of the Word, Piero Boitani 12 Wonder and the Radical Vision of Francis of Assisi, Jon M. Sweeney 13 Rilke’s Poetics of Wonder: Looking at the Picture-Books of Beauty in the Duino Elegies, Emilia Di Rocco 14 Poetry, Radicalism and Wonder: Peter Levi, Priesthood, and David Jones, Robert Fraser 15 ‘The flowers remember / the sugar bowl remembers’: Quotidian Wonder and the Painter/Poet Joanna Margaret Paul, Joanna Osborne Afterword; ‘A Space for God’, Elena Buia Rutt 16 ‘Learn from wonder, nurture astonishment’: Notes on Bergoglio’s Aesthetics, Antonio Spadaro SJ and Francesca Bugliani Knox
Biography
Francesca Bugliani Knox is Honorary Senior Research Associate at UCL and Research Fellow at Roehampton University, both in the UK. 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 is the editor, with David Lonsdale, of Poetry and the Religious Imagination (2015) and, with John Took, of Poetry and Prayer (2016). She is also the editor of Ronald Knox. A Man for All Seasons (2017).
Jennifer Reek has a PhD from the Centre for Literature, Theology and the Arts, University of Glasgow, UK. Her work has appeared in journals such as Literature and Theology and Contemporary Women’s Writing. She is the author of A Poetics of Church: Reading and Writing Sacred Spaces of Poetic Dwelling (2017). Currently, she teaches seminars in Great Books in the Catholic Intellectual Tradition at Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, Connecticut, USA.
