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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... noted in the begin- ning , post - Enlightenment biblical criticism , all " pollute " the garden of the contemporary poetic imagination . At the same time life in England in the early seventeenth century was certainly not Edenic , even ...
... noted : that individual poems which at one level are complete in themselves , at another level are enriched by prior and subsequent poems both within a given collection and across the whole span of his work . Within this particular ...
... noted earlier Thomas clearly holds the latter view - as does Herbert . In his essay " R. S. Thomas : Poet for Turn - of - the - Millenium Believ- ers , " John McEllhenney has pointed out that the image speaks as well to Thomas's ...
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 |