Theological and Philosophical Explorations of the Call of Literature

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 a 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 Marai 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