Poetry and Religion

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course will focus on the last 120 years in literary history, zeroing in on one particular problem - the writing of religious poetry - in order to probe the philosophical collisions that resulted in what we now call our "post-secular" era of thought. Beginning with Gerard Manley Hopkins at the end of the nineteenth-century and major modernists who continued to write powerfully after WWII - T.S. Eliot, David Jones, W. H. Auden - the syllabus will chart a course through the rapidly changing poetic forms of two further generations of poets working devotedly, if differently, out of various religious systems of belief. The many dilemmas of postmodernity include redefining the very notion of "belief" itself after the secular revelations of science and modernity; we will explore the theoretical issues involved in order to better understand what's at stake for each writer we encounter, among them Brian Coffey, Wendy Mulford, Fanny Howe and Hank Lazer. We will ask, among other things, why ancient mystical frameworks seemed newly hospitable, for some, in the face of postmodern suspicions about language and institutions, while for others embracing the sciences renewed faith; we will consider the crucial input of Judaism in Christianity's rethinkings of language and religious experience as well as consider how issues of race and gender inflect changing relationships between poetry and religion. Students will emerge conversant with major debates in contemporary literary theory as well as with developments in poetry since Hopkins; perhaps even more importantly, they will each have had the chance to research some particular aspect of our subject(s) that arouses passionate interest and results in an article-length term paper developed slowly over the course of the semester. In other words, this course offers students the exciting (and measured, not frantic) experience of writing toward publication, just as their professors do. In addition to the term-paper, seminar-level participation is expected, as well as two days of leading class discussion (partnered by a classmate or two). No prior expertise in reading poetry is necessary for this course. (Note: if you have taken my University Seminar, The Death and Return of God in Radical Poetry, you may not take this course; it shares too many of the same materials.)