Description
Poetry, Rosenthal argues, focuses the imagination of a culture as no other written form can. In each chapter of her book, she considers the world's poets as Shelley's "unacknowledged legislators" - creators who dreamed or destroyed visions of Jesus which shaped the spiritual climate of their times and nations. The book, through wide-ranging in its coverage and impeccably researched, is written extremely accessibly, as though for the general reader, hence it should appeal to the literature and poetry market more broadly as well as scholars of both poetry and Christianity.
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Poets have always been the medium through which a culture talks of, and to, its gods. Now, in this learned but lively commentary, Peggy Rosenthal shows us the astonishing range of poetic encounters with Jesus. With a special emphasis on twentieth-century poetry, Rosenthal draws from an unprecedented range of world poetry--from Africa, the Arab world, and the Far East to Latin America and the West--to give readers an understanding of how different times and different cultures have affected the way poets refigure Jesus and of how poets' fascination with the man from Nazareth transcends all barriers. She also demonstrates that, despite the twentieth century's self-definition as a secular and post-Christian epoch, it has produced poetry about Jesus of truly surprising quality and variety. Impeccably researched and extremely accessible, The Poets Jesus will strongly appeal to scholars of poetry and religion as well as for all general readers of poetry.
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