Overview
- Challenges the secularisation thesis and reclaims the place of theology in modernist studies
- Takes a comparative cultural approach to modernism and religion
- Provides a new interpretative framework for reading three canonical poets
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Modern European Literature (PMEL)
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About this book
This is the first book-length study to examine the interface between literary and theological modernisms. It provides a comprehensive account of literary responses to the modernist crisis in Christian theology from a transnational and interdenominational perspective. It offers a cultural history of the period, considering a wide range of literary and historical sources, including novels, drama, poetry, literary criticism, encyclicals, theological and philosophical treatises, periodical publications, and wartime propaganda. By contextualising literary modernism within the cultural, religious, and political landscape, the book reveals fundamental yet largely forgotten connections between literary and theological modernisms. It shows that early-twentieth-century authors, poets, and critics, including Rainer Maria Rilke, T. S. Eliot, and Czesław Miłosz, actively engaged with the debates between modernist and neo-scholastic theologians raging across Europe. These debates contributed to developing new ways of thinking about the relationship between religion and literature, and informed contemporary critical writings on aesthetics and poetics.
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Keywords
Table of contents (8 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Reconciling Christianity and Modernity in the Early Twentieth Century
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Front Matter
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Poetry, Aesthetics, and Theology (c. 1900–1950)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Reviews
“Rzepa’s study excels in its use of archival sources, its attention to local contexts, and its overview of European currents of ideas; she conclusively demonstrates the religious sources of cultural modernism on a transnational scale. ... Rzepa’s wealth of historical detail brings out, particularly in her authorial studies, a struggle to find ‘a middle way’, the possibility of a ‘dynamic tension’ between inner experience and dogma.” (Henry Mead, Modernist Cultures, Vol. 18 (1), February, 2023)
“Modernism and Theology: Rainer Maria Rilke, T.S. Eliot, Czesław Miłosz is an extraordinarily rich contribution to the discussion that has emerged on the relation between literary modernism and Christianity, or religion in general. It is a vast compendium of information … . The author’s narrative flair ensures that the book is highly readable … . The study is extremely well documented, thorough and immensely detailed in its presentation of all its major aspects … .” (Jean Ward, KONTEKSTY KULTURY, Vol. 19 (3), 2022)
“Joanna Rzepa’s Modernism and Theology forcefully upends the provincial secularization thesis of Anglo-American literary modernism by placing it in the larger international and historical context of theological modernism, showing how major writers from different cultures and languages have explored and asserted the primacy of spiritual and mystical elements of literature over secularism and materialism. This revolutionary study will have a lasting impact on future studies of literary modernism and generate expansive scholarship and revaluation in the field.” (Ronald Schuchard, General Editor, “The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot”)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Joanna Rzepa is Lecturer in Literature in the Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies at the University of Essex, UK. She researches and teaches twentieth-century literature and culture, comparative literature, and literary translation. Her work has appeared in Modernism/modernity, Comparative Critical Studies, Translation Studies, and other leading journals.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Modernism and Theology
Book Subtitle: Rainer Maria Rilke, T. S. Eliot, Czesław Miłosz
Authors: Joanna Rzepa
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Modern European Literature
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61530-7
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-61529-1Published: 17 March 2021
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-61532-1Published: 18 March 2022
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-61530-7Published: 16 March 2021
Series ISSN: 2634-6478
Series E-ISSN: 2634-6486
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIX, 438
Number of Illustrations: 2 b/w illustrations
Topics: Twentieth-Century Literature, European Literature, Christian Theology