The Greek Bible and the services of the Orthodox Church have proved a rich source of language for many poets of modern Greece, and perhaps for none more than for Kostis Palamas, Angelos Sikelianos and Odysseas Elytis, whose overlapping careers span the period 1876-1996. A blurring of the boundaries between Orthodoxy and 'Greekness' (hellênikotêta, which all three poets celebrate) has often led critics to assume from the Christian borrowings in the poetry the Christian allegiance of the poets. Through detailed analyses of selected poems, focusing on their relation to Biblical and liturgical source texts, this book questions whether the work of these poets is compatible with Christianity at all. It asks whether a Christ who is assimilated, along with the Virgin Mary, into the ancient Greek pantheon, or presented as a symbol of Beauty, or as object of the erotic desire of the women of the Gospels is still within the realm of Orthodoxy. Above all it asks whether, when the poetic ego appropriates to itself words which in their original context belong to Christ or Jehovah, there is any room left for the divine, or whether the poet has not in fact elbowed God off the stage altogether.

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. In the Arabic eleventh-century, scholars were intensely preoccupied with the way that language generated truth and beauty. Their work in poetics, logic, theology, and lexicography defined the intellectual space between God and the poets. In Language Between God and the Poets, Alexander Key argues that ar-Raghib al-Isfahani, Ibn Furak, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), and Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjani shared a conceptual vocabulary based on the words ma‘na and haqiqah. They used this vocabulary to build theories of language, mind, and reality that answered perennial questions: how to structure language and reference, how to describe God, how to construct logical arguments, and how to explain poetic affect.

Named as a 2020 Book of the Year by The Times Literary Supplement Survival Is a Style, Christian Wiman’s first collection of new poems in six years, may be his best book yet. His many readers will recognize the musical and formal variety, the voice that can be tender and funny, credibly mystical and savagely skeptical. But there are many new notes in this collection as well, including a moving elegy to the poet’s father, sharp observations and distillations of modern American life, and rangy poems that merge and juxtapose different modes of speech and thought. The cumulative effect is extraordinary. Reading Survival Is a Style, one has the sense one is encountering work that will become a permanent part of American literature.

Modernism, as a powerful movement, saw the literary and artistic traditions, as well as pure science, starting to evolve radically, creating a crisis, even chaos, in culture and society. Within this chaos, myth offered an ordered picture of that world employing symbolic and poetic images. Both W.B. Yeats and Angelos Sikelianos embraced myth and symbols because they liberate imagination and raise human consciousness, bringing together humans and the cosmos. Being opposed to the rigidity of scientific materialism that inhibits spiritual development, the two poets were waiting for a new age and a new religion, expecting that they, themselves, would inspire their community and usher in the change. In their longing for a new age, archaeology was a magnetic field for Yeats and Sikelianos, as it was for many writers and thinkers. After Sir Arthur Evans’s discovery of the Minoan Civilization where women appeared so peacefully prominent, the dream of re-creating a gynocentric mythology was no longer a fantasy. In Yeats’s and Sikelianos’s gynocentric mythology, the feminine figure appears in various forms and, like in a drama, it plays different roles. Significantly, a gynocentric mythology permeates the work of the two poets and this mythology is of pivotal importance in their poetry, their poetics and even in their life as the intensity of their creative desire brought to them female personalities to inspire and guide them. Indeed, in Yeats’s and Sikelianos’s gynocentric mythology, the image of the feminine holds a place within a historical context taking the reader into a larger social, political and religious space.

Brett Gray traces the portrayal of Christ that emerges throughout Williams' diverse writings, including in his engagements with literature and philosophy. What emerges is a vision of Jesus that grows from the roots of the Christian tradition, but is pronounced in a contemporary idiom and sensitive to modern concerns. Although attentive to the broad sweep of the Christian tradition, Williams' Christology is also seen in this book to be a particular British artefact, shaped in dialogue with thinkers such as Donald MacKinnon and Gillian Rose. What is ultimately brought to the surface in this work is the profoundly hopeful, if frequently under-pronounced, eschatology underlying Williams' Christology. Jesus is the “last word”, changing creation's possibilities and summoning it into an endless and vivifying journey.

This book argues that current criticism tends to take the mythology of love either too innocently or too skeptically and therefore distorts the complex roles played by the god of love in longer narrative poems and discursive works of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Existentia hermeneutica is phronetic existence with the aim of cultivating practical wisdom in human life: It comes from life, influences life, and transforms life. Understanding what is happening in life requires reaching the hermeneutic truth, which is the truth of understanding. The experience of hermeneutic truth calls for personal commitment and existential response, and, thus, expresses the hermeneutic moral imperative. Referring to Heidegger’s phenomenological analytics of Dasein, Gadamer emphasizes that understanding is not only one of the human capabilities, but a way of Dasein’s being-in-the-world.

In Praise of Mortality is an artfully curated selection of poems that investigate the emotional and psychological impact of the industrial revolution, and meditate on themes of impermanence and the steady passage of time. Rainer Maria Rilke's work stands as a thoughtful, rare combination of insight, beauty, and accessibility to the modern world.

Abandon dead, dry, religious rule-keeping and embrace the promise of being truly known and deeply loved. Jefferson Bethke burst into the cultural conversation with a passionate, provocative poem titled "Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus." The 4-minute video became an overnight sensation, with 7 million YouTube views in its first 48 hours (and 23+ million in a year). Bethke's message clearly struck a chord with believers and nonbelievers alike, triggering an avalanche of responses running the gamut from encouraged to enraged. In his New York Times bestseller Jesus > Religion, Bethke unpacks similar contrasts that he drew in the poem--highlighting the difference between teeth gritting and grace, law and love, performance and peace, despair, and hope. With refreshing candor, he delves into the motivation behind his message, beginning with the unvarnished tale of his own plunge from the pinnacle of a works-based, fake-smile existence that sapped his strength and led him down a path of destructive behavior. Along the way, Bethke gives you the tools you need to: Humbly and prayerfully open your mind Understand Jesus for all that he is View the church from a brand-new perspective Bethke is quick to acknowledge that he's not a pastor or theologian, but simply an ordinary, twenty-something who cried out for a life greater than the one for which he had settled. On this journey, Bethke discovered the real Jesus, who beckoned him with love beyond the props of false religion. Praise for Jesus > Religion: "Jeff's book will make you stop and listen to a voice in your heart that may have been drowned out by the noise of religion. Listen to that voice, then follow it--right to the feet of Jesus." --Bob Goff, author of New York Times bestsellers Love Does and Everybody, Always "The book you hold in your hands is Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz meets C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity meets Augustine's Confessions. This book is going to awaken an entire generation to Jesus and His grace." --Derwin L. Gray, lead pastor of Transformation Church, author of Limitless Life: Breaking Free from the Labels That Hold You Back

An Earthy Entanglement with Spirituality offers compelling perspectives on the human spirit as represented in literature and art. Authors approach the inquiry using distinct critical approaches to varied primary sources—poetry of various genres and periods, Shakespearean drama, contemporary theater, Renaissance sculpture, and the novel, short story, sketch, and dialogue.