Poets' Meeting: George Herbert, R.S. Thomas, and the Argument with GodGeorge Herbert (1593-1633) and R.S. Thomas (1913-2000), each a major English poet and an Anglican priest, lived in very different times, one before the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and industrialization, and one following. Yet the two men and their poetry bear striking resemblances: Both loved nature and music, both were pacifists, and both struggled with the claims of faith, the nature of the spiritual life, and the recurrent silences of God. This book demonstrates that when their lives and poems are studied side by side, each man enhances our understanding of the other. The first essay deals with their sense of calling as priests and poets. The work then explores topics that relate to their roles as parish priests: ministry, the Bible, the Eucharist, and prayer. Several essays follow dealing with broader questions of the human condition: faith, sin, love, reason and science, and nature. The work concludes by considering their poems about Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter. |
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... meaning , does not invalidate the earlier one or at least not neces- sarily - for each assay extended his effort to ... meanings of Incarnation and Crucifixion . As with the two earlier poems Thomas probed the ways of men rather than of ...
... meaning and the search for a poetic language to express meaning . The conventional Christmas imagery , wintry and rural , which Thomas used in the earlier poems , he here abandoned , or rather transformed by fus- ing it with imagery ...
... meanings do we attach to it ? And to assert that , whatever the meanings , they have all been to our own advan- tage . We have not explored the meaning of it for the fullness of God's cre- ation and so have diminished it . By negation ...
Contents
Preface | 1 |
The Vocations of Priest and Poet | 13 |
Country Parsons | 36 |
Copyright | |
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Poets' Meeting: George Herbert, R.S. Thomas, and the Argument with God William J. McGill Limited preview - 2003 |