This is an original contribution to understanding of an important but overlooked aspect of modern poetry, offering a comparative approach to the topic.This collection of research explores the interaction of religious awareness and literary expression in English poetry in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Many different types of poetics may be seen to be at work in the period 1875 to 2005, along with various kinds of religious awareness and poetic expression. Religious experience has a crucial influence on literary language, and the latter is renewed by religious culture. The religious dimension has been a decisive factor of modern English poetic expression of the last hundred years or so.The religious and mystical dimension of poetry of the period is borne out by the focus on, among other things, grace and purgation, the tension between time and eternity, redemption and the demands of eschatology, immanence and transcendence, and conversion and martyrdom. The chapters also explore how church practice and ritual, architecture and liturgy, play into the poetry of the period. This volume offers a comprehensive discussion of this important but often overlooked aspect of modern English poetry.

Author Biography

Adrian Grafe is Senior Lecturer in the English Faculty at Paris IV Sorbonne, France. Kathleen Bell is a Senior Lecturer in English at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK. Roland Bouyssou is Emeritus Professor of English at Toulouse Mirail University, France. Michael Edwards is Professor for the Study of Literary Creation in English at the College de France, Paris. Andrew Harrison is Lecturer at the University of Darmstadt, Germany Annick Johnson is Lecturer in English Literature at Artois University, France. Andrew McKeown is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Poitiers, France. Emily Taylor Merriman is an associate professor at San Francisco State University, USA. Maureen Moran is Professor of English Literature at Brunel University, UK, where she has been both Head of Department and Dean of the Faculty of Arts. Claire Masurel-Murray has previously held a teaching post at Trinity College Dublin and a research fellowship at Harvard and currently teaches at Paris III, France. She is working on a PhD in English literature. Catherine Phillips is Fellow in English at Downing College, Cambridge, UK. David Rudrum teaches at the University of Huddersfield, University, UK. David Summers teaches at Capital University in Columbus Ohio, USA. Daniel Szabo teaches at Paris 7 University, France.