The Lyric Voice in English Theology

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Description

In this book, Elizabeth S. Dodd traces the contours of a lyric theology through the lens of English lyric tradition. She addresses the dominance of narrative and drama in contemporary theological aesthetics by drawing on recent developments in lyric theory. Informed by the work of critics such as Jonathan Culler, Dodd explores the significance of lyric for theological discourse. Lyric is presented here as a short, musical, expressive and personal form that is also fragmentary, embodied, socially located and performative. The main chapters address key moments in English lyric tradition. This selective approach aims to expand the theological gaze beyond the monochromatic features of the traditional canon. It covers Anglo-Saxon hymns, medieval lullaby carols, early-modern sonnets and the prophetic poetry of Romanticism, but also Grime and hip hop, performance poetry, social media poetry and Geoffrey Hill.

Reviews

Inspiring! Beth Dodd not only alerts us to profound and life-giving feeling, imagination, and wisdom in one English lyric voice after another, from the Latin and early English of the Middle Ages to the multicultural present; she herself also writes in an original, attractive, and challenging lyric voice that speaks both intimately and publicly into our present situation. Readers will find a feast of senses and sounds, from lullabies to hurricanes, and from visceral cries of jubilation, wonder and rage to the disciplined, musical formality of sonnets and liturgies. Dodd succeeds in combining rigorous academic study and cultural sensitivity with deep spirituality, and this major work confirms her as a leading contributor to the tradition within which she is at the same time both fully at home and prophetically perceptive. * David F. Ford OBE, University of Cambridge, UK *
Elizabeth Dodd's The Lyric Voice in English Theology, in its deep engagement with contemporary debates about the nature of the lyric and a richly diverse set of poetic texts, offers a much-needed reimagining of the role of lyric modes of thought in the ways we reflect, theologically, on such subjects as prayer, prophecy, difference, and suffering. Its call for a theology willing to follow our best poets into those spaces where the Spirit draws beauty out of discord, wholeness out of limits, and life out of brokenness and death is, in itself, an act of prophetic speech, beautifully rendered and deeply moving. * Thomas Gardner, Virginia Tech, USA *
This book on the lyric voice in English theology is a remarkable and rich tour de force celebrating the theological heart of the language and form of lyric poetry. Its theological wisdom transcends the impositions of theologians on the vibrant life of a poetic tradition that links Caedmon through the babble of lyric music with the poetry of the Caribbean, the seventeenth century poet Mary Carey, John Donne and George Herbert, and the romantics Blake and Clare, with Geoffrey Hill and the contemporary poetry of Gillian Allnutt and Warsan Shire. If lyric poetry is a gathering of fragments it is also a liturgical celebration of the music of words. This is a book of deep theological, liturgical and literary wisdom that demands, and deserves, careful study and patient reflection. * David Jasper, University of Glasgow, UK *

Author Bio

Elizabeth S. Dodd is the Programme leader for Postgraduate Programmes in Theology, Ministry and Mission at Sarum College, UK.