Modernism and Theology

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 Czesaw Miosz, 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.

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

Auteur

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.

Résumé

"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, Czeslaw Milosz 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)

Contenu

1. Introduction.- 2. A Theological History of Modernism.- 3. Spiritualising the War: Religion, Conflict, and Politics.- 4. Spaces of Encounter: Theological Modernism and Neo-Scholasticism in Literature and Literary Criticism.- 5. The Ripening Dark God of Modernity: Religion and Creativity in Rainer Maria Rilke's and Lou Andreas-Salomé's Writings.- 6. A 'raid on the absolute': Dogmatic Tradition and Mystical Experience in T. S. Eliot's Poetry and Criticism.- 7. 'A passionate pursuit of the Real': Theology and Poetics in Czesaw Miosz's Writings.- 8. Epilogue.