Kierkegaard and the Poetry of the Gospel - (Bloomsbury Studies in Philosophy and Poetry) by Frances Maughan-Brown & Rick Anthony Furtak (Hardcover)

About the Book

The first book in any language that collects scholarly essays on Kierkegaard's beautiful and vital Lily Discourses.

Book Synopsis

This is the first book in any language to collect scholarly essays on Kierkegaard's extraordinary series of Lily Discourses. Long considered "merely" devotional writings, the Lily Discourses constitute a sustained and repeated attempt to respond to the imperative issues in Matthew's Gospel. Kierkegaard discovers in figures of the lily and the bird a paradoxical obligation to think together, unremittingly, both suffering and joy, the fleeting nature of experience, and the effort to endow this very transience with enduring significance.

In Kierkegaard and the Poetry of the Gospel, a diverse group of emerging and established interpreters addresses the religious, literary, and philosophical dimensions of these discourses. In the process, they identify and develop a theory of language-and of exemplarity-crucial to all of Kierkegaard's writings. To ask what the lily and bird teach is also to ask what it means, or could mean, to be human. This collection is pivotal in registering, clarifying, and celebrating Kierkegaard's multiple responses to that question suspended at the heart of his Lily Discourses. It is the go-to text for anyone teaching or writing about the Lily Discourses across philosophy, literary studies, and religion.

Review Quotes

Kierkegaard and the Poetry of the Gospel: Essays on the Lily Discoursesoffers a timely, cross-disciplinary study of our ambiguous relations with ourselves, each other, and our planet. The editors have gathered diverse voices and approaches from around the globe in an unprecedented compilation of nuanced study and insight. The Kierkegaardian oeuvre, the Lily Discourses, and biblical hermeneutics (concerning a famous passage from the Sermon on the Mount) all receive new life in this magnificent volume - both for the seasoned Kierkegaard scholar and those new to his work.
Anna L Söderquist, Associate Professor of Philosophy; Curator of the Hong Kierkegaard Library, St. Olaf College, Minnesota, USA

Frances Maughan-Brown and Rick Anthony Furtak have convened a diverse group of international contributors who together explore the many discourses Kierkegaard composed at the provocation of Jesus's Sermon on the Mount's exhortation to consider the lilies of the field and the birds of the air as models for human living. Maughan-Brown's influence in particular is everywhere in evidence in these chapters; the contributors are all building upon her pioneering study of writings from different works and years in Kierkegaard's career. The lily discourses are treated here with the care and thoughtfulness that they merit: The contributors develop the lyrical, musical, ecological, symbolic, aesthetic, ethical and even mystical aspects of these complex and challenging texts. Kierkegaard's meditations on the lily and the bird could not be more relevant or timely. In an age of anxiety and crisis, this volume proves that Kierkegaard's stern and soothing, difficult and beautiful words on living like the lily and the bird-free of care and fully present in the moment-speak more urgently to us today than ever.
Jeffrey A. Hanson, Harvard University, USA

This is a deeply peaceful book, inviting us to contemplate the lilies and the birds with Kierkegaard. The reader experiences the constancy and quiet joy of these beings through essays that range across Kierkegaard's writings.
Eleanor Helms, Professor of Philosophy at California Polytechnic State University, USA

About the Author

Frances Maughan-Brown is Lecturer in Philosophy and the First Year Program at the College of the Holy Cross, USA.

Rick Anthony Furtak is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Colorado College, USA.