Adam's Curse: Reflections on Religion and LiteratureW. B. Yeats's poem "Adam's Curse" provides Donoghue with motif and incentive. In Genesis God says to Adam: "Because thou hast harkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life." Yeats put it this way: "It is certain there is no fine thing / Since Adam's curse but needs much labouring." Based on a conversation he had with his beloved Maud Gonne and her sister Kathleen, Yeats's poem thinks about how difficult it is to be beautiful, to write great poetry, to love. In his Erasmus Lectures, Donoghue thinks about the lasting difficulties involved in understanding, and living with, cultural, literary, and religious values that are in restless relation to one another. On these and related matters, Donoghue enters into conversation with a variety of writers, some of them-John Crowe Ransom, Hans Urs von Balthasar, William Lynch, Alasdair MacIntyre, Emmanuel Levinas, Andrew Delbanco, and Robert Bellah-signaled by the titles of the seven lectures. Into the thematic space suggested by each of these titles Donoghue invites other writers and sages to join the conversation-Henry Adams, William Empson, John Milbank, Czeslaw Milosz, Seamus Heaney, Gabriel Josipovici, and many more. The "talk," as you might expect, keeps coming around to the reading of specific literary texts: passages from Paradise Lost, Stevens's "Esthétique du mal," fiction by Gide and J. F. Powers and J. M. Coetzee, to name only a few. In Adan's Curse, Donoghue brings his special intelligence to bear on some of the intersections where religion and literature provocatively meet. |
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Page 101
Reflections on Religion and Literature Denis Donoghue. any other writer , articulates a religious sensibility that ... religion may have something to say about the opacities of human life . But you would never discover from his books what ...
Reflections on Religion and Literature Denis Donoghue. any other writer , articulates a religious sensibility that ... religion may have something to say about the opacities of human life . But you would never discover from his books what ...
Page 107
Reflections on Religion and Literature Denis Donoghue. duct of citizens , any religion , large or small , familiar or strange , can be of equal value to any other . The fact that most American religions have been biblical and that most ...
Reflections on Religion and Literature Denis Donoghue. duct of citizens , any religion , large or small , familiar or strange , can be of equal value to any other . The fact that most American religions have been biblical and that most ...
Page 110
... religion , it degrades the serious issues of religious belief and practice . To call the Youth Movement in 1968 a reli- gion is to misuse language and degrade religion . I am aware of the com- mon prejudice by which issues of life and ...
... religion , it degrades the serious issues of religious belief and practice . To call the Youth Movement in 1968 a reli- gion is to misuse language and degrade religion . I am aware of the com- mon prejudice by which issues of life and ...
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acknowledge Adam's Curse Adams Allen Tate analogy Aquinas argues assert Aubade Balthasar Baudelaire Baudelaire's become belief Bellah called Catholic century Chartres Christ and Apollo Christianity Church civil religion claim Cold Heaven Collected Poems concept criticism death Devil divine doctrine edited Empson essay essence ethics evil F. R. Leavis Father feeling fiction force Gnosticism Heaney human Ibid imagination Jesus John Josipovici Larkin Leavis Levinas Levinas's live Lynch MacIntyre metaphor Milbank Milosz Milton mind modern moral nature ontology pain Paradise Lost person philosophy poet poetry politics Quoted R. P. Blackmur Ransom reading relation religious rhetoric Roberto Calasso Satan Satanic Verses says secular seems sense social speak spirit Stevens Stevens's T. S. Eliot Tate Testament theology theory things thou thought thunder tion Totality and Infinity translated University Press W. B. Yeats Wallace Stevens William Empson words writes Yeats Yeats's York