H.D. and modernist religious imagination : mysticism and writing / Elizabeth Anderson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Anderson, Elizabeth (Research Fellow), author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

H. D. (Hilda Doolittle), 1886-1961--Criticism and interpretation.

H. D.

Cixous, Hélène, 1937-.

Cixous, Hélène.

Holy, The, in literature.

Modernism (Literature).

Religion and literature.

Religion in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (202 p.)

Place of Publication:

London ; New York, N.Y. : Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"Exploring the intersection of religious sensibility and creativity in the poetry and prose of the American modernist writer, H.D., this volume explores the nexus of the religious, the visionary, the creative and the material. Drawing on original archival research and analyses of newly published and currently unpublished writings by H.D., Elizabeth Anderson shows how the poet's work is informed by a range of religious traditions, from the complexities and contradictions of Moravian Christianity to a wide range of esoteric beliefs and practices. H.D and Modernist Religious Imagination brings H. D.'s texts into dialogue with the French theorist Hélène Cixous, whose attention to writing, imagination and the sacred has been a neglected, but rich, critical and theological resource. In analysing the connection both writers craft between the sacred, the material and the creative, this study makes a thoroughly original contribution to the emerging scholarly conversation on modernism and religion, and the debate on the inter-relation of the spiritual and the material within the interdisciplinary field of literature and religion"--Bloomsbury Publishing.

Contents:

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Visionary hermeticism

H.D. and Cixous : mysticism in writing

Texts and contexts

Critical context : modernist religious imagination

H.D. and modernist religious imagination : mysticism and writing

Voices of the dead : trauma and spiritualism

Trauma : testimony and witness

Haunting : spiritualism, trauma and memory

Conclusion : haunted hermeneutics

Cloud of witnesses : Moravian spirituality and intimate communities

Moravian genealogy and history

'Intimate communion' : circles of belonging

The gift and the writing cure

Conclusion

Writing as ritual

Drama and ritual in The sword went out to sea

Moravian litany in The gift

Alchemical ritual and Hermeticism in Trilogy

Ritual and language

Image and difference

Ricoeur : imagination, metaphor and alterity

Cixous and difference

H.D.'s bees and honey

Writing as sanctuary

Place and movement in cultural criticism

Fragrant dust : gardens in Oran

H.D.'s garden in the city

Cixous's Algeriance

H.D.'s expatriatism : spirals and beelines

Writing as sanctuary : sacred places

The sanctuary that moves

Conclusion : nomadic pilgrimage

Ancient wisdom

Feminist revisioning, imagination and modernism

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781472543615

1472543610

9781441190895

1441190899

9781441139733

1441139737

OCLC:

853506091