“On Christian Spirituality and Criticism”: In Conversation with R. S. Thomas
In his recent article “On Christian Spirituality and Criticism, or, Postsecularity after R. S. Thomas” Matthew Wickman takes up the issue of “spiritual transformation, the ways literary texts evoke such experiences, and the transformative critical practices that potentially follow.”1 He writes: “Two poems by R. S. Thomas inspire a mode of critical engagement that does not reproduce the conventions of critique as much as attune the mind to a spiritual fullness of life that potentially awaits it. Such criticism exceeds the scope of much postsecular thought , which remains committed to a critique of secularization, and resonates instead with the field of Christian Spirituality, where transformative experience functions as both the means and end of academic inquiry. This approach expands the horizons of literary criticism, converting it into a vehicle for transformative visions of the world and those who engage literature.”2
In conversation with readings from R.S. Thomas, Laura Reece Hogan, Paul L. Pastor, and Sally Read, we will discuss both the principles the article articulates, and the ways in which their poetry illustrates, illuminates, and complicates them.
Facilitated by Matthew Wickman, Professor of English and Founding Director of BYU Humanities Center.
1 Matthew Wickman, "On Christian Spirituality and Criticism, or, Postsecularity after R. S. Thomas," Christianity & Literature 71, no. 4 (2022): 522, muse.jhu.edu/article/873925.
2 Ibid.
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