Towards a Christian Poetics

What is the meaning of literature and of language in a Christian perspective? Why do they exist? More particularly, what can we learn about writing if it occurs in a world excluded from Eden? It is by asking these questions, more fundamental than those usually posed, that the present book can offer to illuminate the relation of writing to reality, and suggest a new understanding of such large matters a comedy, tragedy, story, rhetoric and translation. At the centre of the book is a chapter on T.S.Eliot, who is observed actually engaging as a poet with the issues under discussion. If language was involved in the Fall and also in Pentecost, it is reasonable to explore literature, where the possibilities of language are most intense, as a contention with a fallen world and an attempt, through the renewal of language, to recreate that world. In no way does the author address only the Christian reader; he seeks common ground with all readers, whatever their beliefs, by a strict attentiveness to specific works and to the desires we bring to the reading of them. Not only is his study of literature wide-ranging, covering writers such as Dante, Shakespeare, Molière and Wordsworth, Dr Edwards looks beyond literature in extending the approach to music and painting. This, then, is a study which will be of interest to practioners of several different disciplines.