H.D. and Modernist Religious Imagination: Mysticism and Writing

Description

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 Drawing on original archival research and analyses of newly published and currently unpublished writings by H.D., Elizabeth Anderson shows how the poet's work is informed by a range of religious traditions, from the complexities and contradictions of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. FC Half title Also available from Bloomsbury Title Copyright Dedication 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 1 Voices of the Dead: Trauma and spiritualism Trauma: Testimony and witness Haunting: Spiritualism, trauma and memory Conclusion: Haunted hermeneutics 2 Cloud of Witnesses: Moravian spirituality and intimate communities Moravian genealogy and history ‘Intimate Communion’: Circles of belonging The Gift and the writing cure Conclusion 3 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 4 Image and Difference Ricoeur: Imagination, metaphor and alterity Cixous and difference H.D.’s bees and honey Conclusion 5 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 Conclusion Ancient Wisdom Feminist revisioning, imagination and modernism Bibliography Index