Notice bibliographique
- Notice
Type(s) de contenu et mode(s) de consultation : Texte noté : sans médiation
Auteur(s) : Davidson, Toby
Titre(s) : Christian mysticism and Australian poetry [Texte imprimé] / Toby Davidson
Publication : Amherst (N.Y.) : Cambria press, cop. 2013
Description matérielle : 1 vol. (VIII-283 p.) ; 24 cm
Collection : Cambria Studies in Australian Literature Series
Lien à la collection : Cambria studies in Australian literature series
Comprend : Introduction: traditions and definitions ; Cross-currents and precedents ; Ada
Cambridge and the lonely seas ; John Shaw Neilson: "something of a mystic" ; Francis
Webb and the search ; Judith Wright, the fire of love and the dark star ; Kevin
Hart: Beyond reach of language ; Christian mystical poetics and indigenous Australia
; Conclusion.
Note(s) : Includes bibliographical references (pages 255-278) and index
"Australian poetry is popularly conceived as a tradition founded by the wry, secular
and stoic strains of its late-nineteenth-century bush balladeers Adam Lindsay Gordon,
Henry Lawson and 'Banjo' Paterson, consolidated into a land-based 'vigour' in publications
such as the Bulletin. Yet this popular conception relies on not actually consulting
the poetry itself, which for well over one hundred and fifty years has been cerebral,
introspective, feminine and highly -- even experimentally -- religious. Western Christian
mystics and Western Christian mystical poets of the classical world, Middle Ages and
modern era have been sources of inspiration, influence and correspondence for Australian
poets since the writings of Charles Harpur (1813-1868), but there have also been ongoing
debates as to how mysticism might be defined, whom its true exemplars might be, and
whether poets should be considered mystical authorities. This book dedicates whole
chapters to five Australian Christian mystical poets: Ada Cambridge (1864-1926), John
Shaw Neilson (1872-1943), Francis Webb (1925-1973), Judith Wright (1915-2000) and
Kevin Hart (1954 - ), with additional contextual chapters on their contemporaries
and new approaches by Aboriginal poets since the early 1990s. Scholars and students
are increasingly disregarding the popular 'bush' facade and reading Australian poetry
in terms of the sacred, the philosophical, the contemplative and the transcendent.
At a national level this can be traced back to the post-war and 1970s generations
of poets and readers who rejected the safe old bush myths for a more relentless interrogation
of Australian origins, environments and metaphysics. Yet internationally, as among
the general Australian public, the very idea of an Australian Christian mystical poetry
seems incongruous with a metaphysically weak bush tradition which asks very little
of them. This book casts Australian poetry in a new light by showing how Australian
Christian mystical poetics can be found in every era of Australian letters, how literary
hostilities towards women poets, eroticism and contemplation served to stifle a critical
appreciation of mystical poetics until recent decades, and how in the twentieth century
one Australian Christian mystical poet began to influence another and share their
appreciations of Dante, Donne, Traherne, Blake, Wordsworth, Brontë, Rossetti, Hopkins,
Yeats, Eliot and Lowell. Despite parallel international works on British, American
and European Christian mystical poets, there has never been a book-length exploration
of Australian Christian mystical poets or poetics. This study draws upon eight years
of research to not only consider debates around Christian mysticism during the lives
of its selected poets, but to also frame its argument in terms of the twenty-first-century
Christian mysticism scholarship of Kevin Hart, Amy Hollywood, Ursula King and Bernard
McGinn's seminal multi-volume history of Western Christian mysticism, The Presence
of God. Simultaneously, Australian literary criticism of the relevant eras as well
as in the present are explicitly engaged throughout. This book is a rigorous work
of original scholarship which will significantly impact future discussions on the
possibilities of Australian literature."--Publisher's website
Sujet(s) : Poésie chrétienne -- Australie
Mystique et littérature
Poésie australienne -- 20e siècle
Identifiants, prix et caractéristiques : ISBN 9781604978445 (hbk.). - ISBN 1604978449 (hbk.)
Identifiant de la notice : ark:/12148/cb43644466r
Notice n° :
FRBNF43644466
(notice reprise d'un réservoir extérieur)
