The Poets' Jesus: Representations at the End of a Millennium

Through the millennia, poets have 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 the figure of Jesus. Beginning with a reappraisal of Jesus as a poetic subject from biblical times through the eighteenth century, Rosenthal encounters along the way the work of such canonical writers as Dante, John of the Cross, and Milton, and also makes several fascinating detours, including a look at the work of a group of seventeenth-century Chinese poets.

The real emphasis of this study, though, lies in the poetic engagements with Jesus from the Romantic era onward. With insight and breathtaking scope, Rosenthal surveys the imaging of Jesus as Romantic hero by Blake and Whitman; the denigration of Jesus in the work of such proto-modernist writers as Baudelaire, and Borges' and other post-moderns' figurations of Jesus as anti-hero. Finally, Rosenthal examines Jesus' position today as a source of serious poetic inspiration among many poets worldwide.

From investigations of Rilke to Levertov, Milosz to N. Scott Momaday, Auden to Annie Dillard, the Nicaraguan poet Ruben Dario to the Korean Ku Sang, the Arabic world to the negritude movement of the African diaspora, The Poets' Jesus superbly shows how poets' fascination with the man from Nazareth transcends all barriers. It 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. The first study of its kind in over fifty years, this is a remarkable survey aimed at scholar and general poetry reader alike.