Now available in paperback… Faith, Hope and Poetry Theology and the Poetic Imagination Malcolm Guite, Girton College, Cambridge, UK ‘Here are materials for a profound theology of the imagination, developed in dialogue with writers both familiar and unfamiliar, beautifully combining close reading with wide horizons.’ – The Most Revd Dr Rowan Williams ‘This book leaves the reader in no doubt as to the fruitfulness of poetry for theology. It is both a stimulating study for academic and a delightfully nourishing read for anyone with an interest in Christianity and the arts.’ – Theology ‘[Faith, Hope and Poetry] carries a compelling vision, worked out in dialogue with great poetry from across the span of English literature, of imaginative shaping and symbolic apprehension in the discovery of meaning and [...] truth.’ – Journal of Theological Studies ‘Malcolm Guite offers a welcome challenge to the division of “two cultures”as discerned by C.P.Snow and the dissociation of “sensibility” as identified by T.S.Eliot.’ – Heythrop Journal ‘Guite’s method is to take the reader through a history of English religious poetry, with the aim of showing not merely that poetry has a natural theological bias, but that this theological or devotional content actually lies at the heart of the English poetic tradition.’ – Times Literary Supplement Faith, Hope and Poetry explores the poetic imagination as a way of Contents: Introduction: poetry and transfiguration: reading for a new knowing, a way of seeing reality more clearly. Presenting a series vision; Seeing through dreams: image and truth in The Dream of the of critical appreciations of English poetry from Anglo-Saxon times Rood; Truth through feigning: story and play in A Midsummer Night’s to the present day, Malcolm Guite applies the insights of poetry to Dream and The Tempest; Understanding light: ways of knowing in the contemporary issues and the contribution poetry can make to our poems of Sir John Davies; A second glance: transfigured vision in the religious knowing and the way we ‘do theology’. Readers of this book poems of John Donne and George Herbert; Holy light and human will return to their reading of poetry equipped with new insights and blindness: visions of the invisible in the poetry of Henry Vaughn and enthusiasm and will be challenged to integrate imaginative ways of Milton; A secret ministry: journeying with Coleridge to the source knowing into their other academic and intellectual pursuits. of the imagination; Doubting faith, reticent hope:transfigured vision in Thomas Hardy, Philip Larkin and Geoffrey Hill; The replenishing fountain: hope and renewal in the poetry of Seamus Heaney; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index. Sample pages for published titles are available to view online at: www.ashgate.com To order, please visit: www.ashgate.com March 2012 All online orders receive a discount 268 pages Paperback Alternatively, contact our distributor: 978-1-4094-4936-2 Bookpoint Ltd, Ashgate Publishing Direct Sales, £17.99 130 Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4SB, UK Tel: +44 (0)1235 827730 Fax: +44 (0)1235 400454 www.ashgate.com/ Email: [email protected] isbn/9781409449362.