ABSTRACT
This volume is a collection of essays that explains how literature, philosophy and theology have explored the role of wonder in our lives, particularly through poetry. Wonder has been an object of fascination for these disciplines from the Greek antiquity onwards, yet the connections between their views on the subject are often ignored in subject specific studies.
The book is divided into three parts: Part I opens the conversation on wonder in philosophy, Part II is given to theology and Part III to literary perspectives. An international set of contributors, including poets as well as scholars, have produced a study that looks beyond traditional chronological, geographical and disciplinary boundaries, both within the individual essays themselves and in respect to one another. The volume’s wide historical framework is punctuated by four poems by contemporary poets on the theme of wonder.
An unconventional foray into one of the best-known themes of the European tradition, this book will be of great interest to scholars of literature, theology and philosophy.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|69 pages
Philosophical perspectives
part II|69 pages
Theological perspectives
chapter 6|13 pages
The extraordinary of the ordinary
chapter 8|15 pages
Between the poet and the legislator
part III|69 pages
Literary perspectives
chapter 13|13 pages
Rilke’s poetics of wonder
chapter 15|14 pages
‘The flowers remember/ the sugar bowl remembers’
part IV|16 pages
Afterword