What is the role of spiritual experience in poetry? How do poetic imagination and religious beliefs interact? Exploring such questions through the concept of the religious imagination, this book integrates interdisciplinary research in the area of poetry on the one hand, and theology, philosophy and Christian spirituality on the other. Established theologians, philosophers, literary critics and creative writers explain the primary role of imagination in the writing and reading of poetry.

Contents: Preface; Introduction, Francesca Bugliani Knox. Part I Theology and Literature in Context: Theology and literature in the English-speaking world, Michael Kirwan; Why theologians are interested in literature: theological-literary hermeneutics in the works of Guardini, Balthasar, Tillich and Kuschel, Georg Langenhorst. Part II The Religious Imagination: from Thomas Aquinas to Wallace Stevens: Identifying a religious imagination, Michael Paul Gallagher SJ; Religious imagination and poetic audacity in Thomas Aquinas, Olivier-Thomas Venard OP; Dante and the indispensability of the image, John Took; Law and divine mercy in Shakespeare's religious imagination: Measure for Measure and The Merchant of Venice, Paul S. Fiddes; Wallace Stevens on God, imagination and reality, John McDade. Part III Inspiration: Poetry and Poetry Reading: Poetry as scripture, poetry as inspiration, Jay Parini; The poet as 'worldmaker': T.S. Eliot and the religious imagination, Dominic Griffiths; Non tantum lecturi sed facturi: reading poetry as spiritual transformation, Antonio Spadaro SJ; Reading as active contemplation, Jennifer Reek. Part IV Poets and Spiritual Experience: Mystical Gestures: 'There is a verge of the mind': imagination and mystical gesture in Rilke's later poems, Mark S. Burrows; 'The pulse in the wound': embodiment and grace in Denise Levertov's religious poetry, Sarah Law. Part V Poetry, Religious Imagination and Religious Belief: Images of the Virgin in the late 16th century: the Catholic devotional poetry of Henry Constable, Lilla Grindlay. Index.