Modernism and Religion - (Edinburgh Critical Studies in Modernist Culture) by Jamie Callison

About the Book

Explores the transformation of religious orthodoxy in the age of modernism

Book Synopsis

Modernism and Religion argues that modernism participated in broader processes of religious change in the twentieth century. The new prominence accorded to immanence and immediacy in religious discourse is carried over into the modernist epiphany. Modernism became mystical. The emergence of Catholic theological modernism, human rights, Christian sociology, and philosophical personalism, which are explored here in relation to the work of David Jones, T. S. Eliot, and H.D., represented a strategic attempt on the part of diverse religious authorities to meet the challenge posed by new mysticism. Orthodoxy was itself made new in ways that resisted the secular demand that religion remain a private undertaking. Modernism and Religion presents the mechanical form and clashing registers of long poems by each of the aforementioned writers as an alternative to epiphanic modernism. Their wavering orthodoxy brings matters from which the secular had previously separated religion back once more into its purview.

From the Back Cover

Explores the religious underpinnings of modernist creativity Modernism and Religion locates modernism in the ferment of twentieth-century religious change. While the literary epiphany channelled modernist fascination with immanence and religious immediacy, the present study attends to the strategic response of a range of religious authorities to the new mysticism. The work of T. S. Eliot, H.D., and David Jones, the present study argues, was shaped by an orthodoxy made new in the age of modernism. These poets responded to the crisis of modernity through an engagement with Catholic theological modernism, the liturgical revival, human rights, Christian sociology, philosophical personalism and the emergent retreat movement - discourses that resisted the silencing of religious voices in public debate. Modernism and Religion presents the long poems of each of these writers, marked by their internal heterogeneity, clashing registers and mechanical construction, as an alternative to epiphanic modernism, and positions what the study terms their 'wavering orthodoxy' as a fusion of the sacred and the secular. Jamie Callison is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Agder in Kristiansand, Norway. His publications include The Grail Mass (2018) and articles on T. S. Eliot, David Jones and twentieth-century religious culture which have appeared in ELH, Literature and Theology, and Modernist Cultures among other venues. Modernism and Religion: Between Mysticism and Orthodoxy is his first monograph.

Review Quotes

A perceptive, absorbing, irreplaceable study. In showing how modernist writing was shaped by an interplay between the claims of mysticism as individual experience and the benefits of ecclesiastical frameworks, Callison illuminates a rich seam of innovation and perplexity not just in Jones, Eliot and H.D. but in the broader life of early twentieth-century Christianity.--Douglas Mao, Johns Hopkins University

About the Author

Jamie Callison is Associate Professor of English Literature at University of Agder in Kristiansand, Norway, where he teaches courses on poetry and poetics, modernism and religion and literature. His articles on T. S. Eliot, David Jones and twentieth-century religious culture have appeared in ELH, Literature and Theology and Modernist Cultures. He has published (with Thomas Goldpaugh) a critical edition of a previously unpublished book-length poem by the modernist poet and painter David Jones entitled The Grail Mass (2018). Modernism and Religion: Between Mysticism and Orthodoxy is his first monograph.