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Ink and Spirit: Literature and Spirituality
Ink and Spirit Literature and Spirituality Author:Ronald Blythe, Penelope Lively, Richard Marsh, David Scott, A. N. Wilson, A.N. Wilson A most impressive line-up of authors explores the way that Christianity and literature have fed each other for centuries, despite a long-held mutual suspicion. But, 'If Christianity was withdrawn from the English Literature shelves', asks the novelist and essayist Ronald Blythe, 'what would be left?' The original meeting of symbols and narrative... more » in the Bible have inspired more than 2000 years of literary creation. Poet and priest David Scott explores the lonely, subversive calling of the priest-poet from Caedmon to R.S. Thomas. The novelist A.N. Wilson takes the Church to task for abandoning the literary beauty of its ancient liturgies for banal modern equivalents - a travesty, in his view, of the indissoluble union between literature and spirituality. The Booker Prize winning author Penelope Lively reflects that serious fiction teaches the facts of life: a human creation which mirrors divine activity. Its narrative power bears us along, and the teachings of Christ, though rarely mentioned by name, frequently appear in novelists' creations. Richard Marsh, the Archbishop of Canterbury's Ecumenical Secretary, considers the First World War where, for many, religion turned to mud, yet where David Jones' poetry provided waymarks across the no-man's land via sacrament and myth, back to God, a reminder of the way we have come in these 2000 years. Ink and Spirit is introduced by Stephen Platten, the Dean of Norwich, where the contents of this book were first given as a lecture series.« less