A Poetics of Church:Reading and Writing Sacred Spaces of Poetic Dwelling

by: Jennifer Reek (Author)

Publisher: Routledge

Edition: 1st

Publication Date: 2017/10/3

Language: English

Print Length: 198 pages

ISBN-10: 1472488385

ISBN-13: 9781472488381

Book Description

This innovative book aims to create a ‘poetics of Church’ and a ‘religious imaginary’ as alteatives to more institutional and conventional ways of thinking and of being ‘Church’. Structured as a spiritual and literary jouey, the work moves from models of the institutional Catholic Church into more radical and ambiguous textual spaces, which the author creates by bringing together an unorthodox group of thinkers referred to as ‘poet-companions’:the 16th-century founder of the Society of Jesus, Ignatius of Loyola, the French thinkers Gaston Bachelard and Hélène Cixous, the French poet Yves Bonnefoy, and the English playwright Dennis Potter. Inspired especially by the reading and writing practices of Cixous, the author attempts to exemplify Cixous’ notion of écriture féminine―‘feminine writing’―that suggests new ways of seeing and relating. The project’s uniting of Ignatian spirituality with postmode thinking and its conce with creating new theological, literary and spiritual spaces for women both coincide and contrast with Pope Francis’s pastoral and reformist tendencies, which have neglected to adequately address the marginalisation of women in the Church. As Francis has called for ‘a theology of women’, of which there are, of course, many to draw from, this volume will be a timely contribution with a unique interdisciplinary approach.

About the Author

This innovative book aims to create a ‘poetics of Church’ and a ‘religious imaginary’ as alteatives to more institutional and conventional ways of thinking and of being ‘Church’. Structured as a spiritual and literary jouey, the work moves from models of the institutional Catholic Church into more radical and ambiguous textual spaces, which the author creates by bringing together an unorthodox group of thinkers referred to as ‘poet-companions’:the 16th-century founder of the Society of Jesus, Ignatius of Loyola, the French thinkers Gaston Bachelard and Hélène Cixous, the French poet Yves Bonnefoy, and the English playwright Dennis Potter. Inspired especially by the reading and writing practices of Cixous, the author attempts to exemplify Cixous’ notion of écriture féminine―‘feminine writing’―that suggests new ways of seeing and relating. The project’s uniting of Ignatian spirituality with postmode thinking and its conce with creating new theological, literary and spiritual spaces for women both coincide and contrast with Pope Francis’s pastoral and reformist tendencies, which have neglected to adequately address the marginalisation of women in the Church. As Francis has called for ‘a theology of women’, of which there are, of course, many to draw from, this volume will be a timely contribution with a unique interdisciplinary approach.