Theological and Philosophical Explorations of the Call of Literature

David Lonsdale is a retired senior lecturer at Heythrop College, University of London, and a research associate at Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology, Cambridge, UK.Emilia Di Rocco is a professor of Comparative Literature at Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy.Brett H. Speakman completed his PhD at the Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts at the University of St Andrews, UK. He teaches literature and theology at The McCallie School in Chattanooga, TN, USA.

• Introduction PART I: The Prophetic and the Religious Calling 1. John Henry Newman, Poetry and the Grammar of Assent 2. The Call of Poetry 3. Calling, Kairos, Kerygma: The Example of William Blake 4. 'It calls the calling ‘manly’: Some Thoughts on Gerard Manley Hopkins and Vocation 5. R. S. Thomas - Priest and/or Poet PART II: Literary and Spiritual Journeys 6. Flannery O’ Connor: The Road to the Province of Joy 7. Goethe’s Roman Holiday: A Meeting and Mingling of Self and World 8. Detective Fiction and the Human Search for Meaning 9. Le compte à rebours: Michel Houellebecq, Soumission, and the Literature of Spiritual Exhaustion PART III: Deepening the Call: Encounters Between Literature, Philosophy and Theology 10. Why Not Flowers? A Writer in the Garden and a Call of Literature: Some Thoughts Dedicated to Sandor Márai 11. The Unvoiced Fundamental Note: Atheistic Literature and Divine Resonances 12. 'Not with clever speech': Tesich's Karoo: Literary Insights on Postmodernity 13. Gerard Manley Hopkins’s Poetic Calls: The Performance of the Word 14. Hermeneutics and Resurrection: Re-reading Virgil in Dante’s Purgatorio 21-22 PART IV: Responding to the Call 15. ‘Write what it is to be man’: What Literature is Called to Do 16. The Call of the Muses and The Lure of the Sirens: Ezra Pound’s and T.S. Eliot’s literary vocation 17. Poetry as a Call to Dance: George Mackay Brown and the Healing Power of Literature 18. Poetry and Silence: The Dilemma for the Spiritual Poet