From temple to text: reading and writing sacred spaces of poetic dwelling

Reek, Jennifer Lynn (2013) From temple to text: reading and writing sacred spaces of poetic dwelling. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

This thesis inhabits the space between the art of poetry and the conditions of faith. Its concern is threefold: women, Church, poetics. It undertakes a journey from institutional Church into more radical and textual spaces, beginning with an examination of the state of the Roman Catholic Church today as revealed in Tina Beattie’s critique of Hans Urs von Balthasar, whose disturbing theology has contributed to a misogyny she argues has poisoned the body of the Church. Beattie’s critique is a point of departure into a potentially transformative poetics that she hints at but never fully pursues. I attempt to articulate such a poetics through multiple, spiraling approaches that are interdisciplinary, invitatory, performative and creative. In my reading and writing practices, I seek to trace the contours of this poetics through the delineation of a series of alternative poetic ‘ecclesiological’ spaces. These spaces will be shaped mainly by engaging the work of five poet/thinkers, a seemingly disparate group of authors, who, whether strictly poets or not, exhibit qualities of ‘poetic being’: Ignatius of Loyola, Gaston Bachelard, Yves Bonnefoy, Dennis Potter, and Hélène Cixous. The latter will further assist me in defining this poetic geography through her philosophical and fictive investigations of the interrelationships of gender, writing and spirituality. The readings I undertake are relational, conversations in which reading is a careful listening to texts and writing becomes an organic outcome of that listening. I ask essentially what happens when we, man/woman, stand in the clearing with Heidegger to share his wonder at being? With the help of my poet-companions, I respond that we are transformed after a full engagement of poetic thinking itself. I conclude that we are brought by this engagement to a sacred space of poetic dwelling.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Keywords: Hélène Cixous, Yves Bonnefoy, Gaston Bachelard, Ignatius of Loyola, Dennis Potter, Heidegger, poetics, church, phenomenology, écriture féminine, poetic dwelling, Roman Catholic theology, Ignatian spirituality, sacred space, Tina Beattie, Hans Urs von Balthasar
• Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BR Christianity; P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General)
• Colleges/Schools: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > Theology and Religious Studies
• Supervisor's Name: Jasper, Prof. David and Walton, Dr. Heather
• Date of Award: 2013
• Depositing User: Dr. Jennifer Reek
• Unique ID: glathesis:2013-4537
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 05 Sep 2013 16:30
• Last Modified: 02 Sep 2016 09:47
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/4537